Reports suggest that Renault and Nissan will consolidate its media on a regional basis outside North America, with the European task alone worth nearly £500m. The pitch is expected to be led by Renault marketing boss Stephen Norman.

While there will undoubtedly be a strong focus on cost as part of the pitch, in today's cluttered media environment brands also need smart thinking. We showcase the best work from both brands as evidence of what the incumbents have delivered.

Standout work for Renault includes the Twingo campaign from France, notable partly because Carat rather than the creative agency led the process, while Nissan's engagement with Clear Channel's branded cities initiative is also highly innovative.

In an exclusive preview of Cream's summer edition we also showcase our analysis of Nissan's switch from TV to digital and experiential work across the globe.

 

Nissan wants consumers to experience its cars and is cutting back on tv in favour of experiential and digital executions. Andy Fry reports

If Toyota gets the limelight as the pre-eminent Japanese car brand, then perhaps Nissan could be forgiven for feeling a little bit dejected and unloved.

It is, however, about to get its moment in the media spotlight. As Nissan and partner Renault review their global media agency arrangements it’s worth examining a company with a revived design focus and a sharp concentration on the Asian market.

At the heart of its recent success has been a focus on adventure, outdoor sports and the revitalisation of its 4x4 vehicles. The last decade has, undoubtedly, seen a significant improvement in the creativity and innovation of the group’s flagship marques – with the Qashqai and Infiniti well-regarded.

The partnership with Renault enables exchange of learnings between Europe and Asia and it also has a strategic alliance with Chrysler in the US.

Another factor that stands Nissan in good stead is its global spread. Nissan-Renault boss Carlos Ghosn has made it clear that emerging markets are key. Speaking recently he said: “The metric I look at is vehicles per 1,000 licensed drivers. In the US, it is about 800. In China and India, it is less than 50. There is a lot more opportunity for growth, but not where the big global automakers are based.”

In 2008, it launched a luxury sedan, the Teano, designed with Chinese consumers in mind. The company has driven its X-Trail in India and is planning an assault on the Russian light truck market and the launch of the Nissan masterbrand in Korea.

And finally, there’s its marketing strategy. Most car brands have interesting media work, but there’s no question Nissan has raised its game in recent years, adding some neat experiential twists.

A good example was in 2007 when it signed a two-year contract in the US with Clear Channel in support of the latter’s branded cities concept. Nissan became the official automobile of Westgate – a new $850m, 223-acre city development near Phoenix, Arizona.

Phoenix is Nissan’s third-biggest market in the US – which means there is a big job to be done both in terms of winning new customers and holding on to existing ones – and hosted the 2008 Superbowl.

Nissan gets access to the population of Westgate, plus the 22 million visitors who go there for cultural, commerce and sports events each year, a wide array of media benefits such as mega-size poster panels, vehicle displays, the right to host test drives at concerts, product placement and signage at flagship venues and sponsorship of the city’s ballet troupe.

Nissan Media senior manager Melissa Adams said the deal was a shift away from acquiring signage towards a focus on locations where the brand can secure an integrated presence. With the Superbowl link, the deal also provided on-the-ground support for the launch of the Nissan Murano.

With six Nissan dealerships within 15 miles of Phoenix, Adams said it was an innovative way for Nissan’s brand to engage with target consumers where they live, work and play.

Such direct engagement has also been applied in Europe. A recent campaign involved taking Nissan 4x4 vehicles on to ski-slopes, reaching 100 resorts in six counties. The message focused on one resort in each market and the campaign ran across no less than 20 different formats, reaching a massive 70% of voice across the ski slope environment.

The challenge for OMD and Posterscope was to work out ways of hitting hotspots on the typical consumer journey. The result was adverts on ski lifts, crowd barriers, clock panels and map boards.

OMD also used TV screens in resorts to broadcast Nissan’s Naturally Capable ad. There were also wrapped buses and lifts, branded parking areas and flags, as well as giant vinyls positioned around high-traffic ski lift buildings.

Nissan has backed up its skiing trip with a much deeper commitment to outdoor activity, developed under the banner Nissan Sports Adventure. Designed to promote all of its 4x4 and cross-over marques – Pathfinder, X-Trail, Navara, Patrol and Qashqai – key elements of this sport-based strategy include the Nissan-backed Freeride World Tour, in which elite skiers and snowboarders compete in a series of events to be crowned Freeride World Champion. It is also sponsor of The Nissan Qashqai Challenge – a mountain bike urban freeriding tour across Italy, Spain, Germany, France and the UK.

Sports have also been used to create branded content. Working with TBWA’s branded entertainment arm Stream\, Nissan has created footage based on the skiing tour, which is streamed on its own website and aired via third-party broadcasters such as Extreme Sports Channel.

Stream\ has also been involved in the ski slope strategy, providing bluetooth zones where skiers could download free X-Trail branded piste guides, resort guides and weather reports on to their mobiles.

The agency also organised All Mode Run, which allowed skiers to have their piste run filmed by a cameraman and then transferred onto their mobile.

Such opportunities have become pivotal to the brand’s media, notably for the 2007 pre-launch viral campaign for the Qashqai. Nissan agencies such as TBWA\G1-Europe, OMD and Duke worked together to create a fictitious sport called Qashqai Car Games.

Centred around www.qashqaicargames.com, the agencies created a range of zany stunts. To lend the campaign authenticity, they created a history, rules, fan sites, teams and driver profiles and seeded viral content. There was even a fake PR office and a teaser outdoor campaign in the UK.

In total, 72 vehicles hurtled up and down motorways for six weeks – carrying seven executions, according to Posterscope account director Jai Pushkin. “Our brief was to run a teaser campaign for the Qashqai pre-launch. We wanted an outdoor medium that was innovative and high impact.”

Targeted at 13 countries, the viral strategy attracted 14 million views worldwide – six million of them in the target markets. Overall, targets in Europe were exceeded by 300% – with a clear knock-on effect in terms of sales. By the end of 2007, 100,000 units had been sold – way ahead of pre-launch expectations.

This digital focus also extended to the US launch of the Nissan Sentra. Nissan and Microsoft launched Sentra in a popular Xbox game called Forza Motorsport 2. As part of the deal, Nissan was placed within the game, as well as on its front cover.

On top of car liveries, branded signage and billboards within the game, there was also a
Nissan Xbox Live tournament that offered gamers
the chance to win a Sentra. It became the most successful tournament in Xbox 360 history, with almost 40,000 participants. About 400,000 players downloaded and raced Nissan cars in almost 45 million gaming sessions, while traffic to Nissan’s website increased by 400%.

Nissan also likes to hang out with other cool names, it gets co-branding with the likes of O’Neill during its Freeride Tour in Verbier and also invested early in NBC hit drama Heroes.

In the latter case, a multi-platform, interactive promotion acts as the trigger for fans to try to win a 2008 collector’s edition of the Nissan Rogue SL, signed by Heroes creator Tim Kring. The competition is supported via TV, print and radio ads.

This year and next will be critical for Nissan as the company prepares to launch its upmarket Infiniti brand across the whole of Europe. Based on its previous history, it’s likely that consumer experience and engagement will be key, as noted by its plans for the Infiniti dealer network.

According to Autocar Magazine, “Dealers will be called Infiniti Centres. Decked in lavish cut and smoked glass and chrome, the wood used in the Centres is the same as the wood in the cars, and the designs of their interiors are signed off by the same man who signs off the cars’ exterior design.”

As with the sports adventure component of Nissan’s strategy, the implication is that big brands are searching for a much stronger emotional connection between product and the messages
that promotes it.