Campaign:Jazz Packing

Client:Honda Australia

Agency:DTDigital

Background:

The Honda Jazz sits within an incredibly tough competitive set. The entry-level vehicle has to compete with the likes of Toyota Yaris, Mazda 2, Ford Fiesta, Suzuki Swift, and Hyundai Getz. Honda needed to both raise the profile of the Jazz among younger entry-level buyers and at the same time set it apart from its competitors.

Objective

Honda’s objective was to position the Honda Jazz as a fun and spacious (yet compact) car, build a relationship with Australia’s youth and ultimately drive potential customers to their online showroom.

Strategy

The Jazz significant market power (SMP) is “fits anything you can imagine”. Anyone who has ever enjoyed a ride in a Jazz knows how deceptively spacious the interior actually is, and it is equipped with Honda’s ‘Magic Seats’ which allow for large, awkward sized objects to be stowed. Our strategy therefore was to simply to prove the brand’s claim in a space where our audience was already active.

More specifically, our plan was to:

1. Demonstrate the spaciousness of the Honda Jazz

2. Promote sharing of the campaign to maximise reach, and

3. Drive traffic to the Jazz online showroom.

Execution

In terms of channel, we knew that social media would be perfect. It allowed us to develop a relationship with our younger audience without alienating our older buyers. We had to execute our plan in a way that would achieve cut-through among all the clutter of the internet.

In the first stage of our execution we created a series of online videos to communicate the campaign’s SMP in a tongue-in-cheek style that kept young viewers engaged. These video clips (hipsters, ninjas, rappers and ‘massives’) were seeded with youth-oriented content partners, and further supported with similarly irreverent print ads in street press.

The second part of the project involved driving viewers to a Jazz Packing micro-site where they could enter a competition to win a Honda Jazz. Entrants were asked what they would like to see “packed in a Jazz”, and were then provided with a custom URL to share on social media, which encouraged the entrants to share the concept and their social circles to get involved and vote for their favourite idea. The winning entry was that with the most votes.

Results:

With almost zero media spend the Jazz Packing campaign resulted in a huge response and significant earned media:

• More than 750,000 views on YouTube and a 90 percent ‘Like’ ratio

• ‘Hipsters’ became one of the top ‘favourited’ automotive videos of all time on YouTube

• The campaign received coverage on mainstream sites such as ninemsn, Creative Review, AdNews, Brand Channel, The Alt Report and New York Magazine

• More than 10,000 campaign interactions

• More than 15,000 blog posts

• More than 22,000 Google results, and

• Compared to the pre-campaign period, online showroom traffic increased by 35 percent and brochure requests by 27 percent.