2018 Winners & Shortlists

GONE IN 6 DAYS

Short List
BrandINFINITI OF ARABIAN AUTOMOBILES
Product/ServiceINFINITI'S AUTOMANIA TRADE-IN
EntrantINITIATIVE MENA Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
CategoryDurable Consumer Goods, including Cars
Idea Creation INITIATIVE MENA Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Media Placement INITIATIVE MENA Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

The Campaign

Despite Google research showing that the average vehicle purchase cycle from discovery to purchase lasted about 3 months, we believed that there was more to this research that needed to be uncovered. Using INFINITI’S CRM data, we dug deeper to learn what customers were doing for three months. What we actually learnt was that they would make their first interactions with the dealer, then wait for an offer period during which to buy. Since there was generally at least one offer every quarter, the 3-month purchase cycle masked the reality that the customer was only ‘active’ for a small proportion of that time. The rest of the time, they were just waiting for the right offer. Which meant that if buyers were only converting at the last minute, our task was to create enough of a sense of urgency using media to entice them to act sooner.

Creative Execution

We played on customers Fear of Missing Out with a unique integrated 6-day Automania trade-in campaign that continually reminded them that time was running out. To amplify the sense of urgency, our creative featured a real-time live countdown timer on all our digital executions. Every second they took to make a decision was a constant reminder that they may miss out on our amazing offer unless they acted immediately. Our ticker would follow our target audience wherever they were, from social feeds to their inboxes and everywhere in between. And even when they disconnected, our outdoor and radio placements would be there to reinforce the message.

We set out to arrest the decline in sales and walk ins from Automania and to reinvigorate a historically successful offer concept. Overall showroom sales increased by 42% during our 6-day campaign vs. a typical increase of 20% from previous 3-week trade-in campaigns. Walk-ins increased by 32% during the weekend that fell within the 6 day period. At INFINITI’s smallest showroom, four customers walked in during Automania and all of them converted. Pleasantly surprising given only a couple of customers normally walk in to this branch in an entire month. The campaign has reinvigorated Automania; yet the impact on our future planning approach has been even more profound. It has led to a fundamental change in the way we promote all time sensitive offers for INFINITI. But the greatest endorsement of our success has come from competitors – who are now adopting similar tactics of their own.

If you want people to act quickly, give them a deadline. Because the reality is, the more time you give someone to make a decision, the more time they’ll take to make it. Knowing this, we wondered if we could sell as many cars in 6 days as we normally would in 3 weeks simply by changing our media approach. It turns out we could and we did, simply by creating a sense of urgency that our customers had never previously faced.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Our campaign needed to reach anyone in the market for a premium car upgrade, and get them into the showroom. We’d already identified the need to create urgency – the simplest way of achieving this was by reducing the length of INFINITI’s next Automania campaign from 3 weeks to just 6 days. This meant buyers – who we knew were only converting in the final days of an offer – would only have those final days available to them. Our media mix would be no different to previous Automania campaigns – digital, radio, OOH. However, this time we would take advantage of dynamic media placements, giving us the opportunity to constantly update the message and reinforce the idea that time was running out. Live performance data would enable us to optimise our targeting and re-targeting in real-time, to reach users within the purchase cycle to push them over the line.

Credits

Name Company Role
Alexandra de Smet Initiative Dubai Digital Media Manager
Bassem Hoss Initiative Dubai Senior Digital Media Planner
Ali Berjawi Initiative Dubai Account Director
Aly Mouzannar Initiative Dubai Senior Media Planner