Great use of Social Media

Japanese car maker Nissan wanted to showcase the benefits of electric cars and promote its award winning electric car – Nissan Leaf, in the UK. Their approach was fresh, engaging & effective.

Nissan used Twitter to engage with its target audience. Nissan enlisted a series of Leaf cars as taxis and offered a free ride to anyone who tweeted their destination on twitter along with the hashtag #6XCHEAPER. Authors & content marketers have been using the ‘pay-by-tweet’ option for sometime now with moderate success. The combination of online engagement with offline engagement proved to be a clincher for its customers.

The emphasis of the entire campaign was to promote electric cars as an effective, cheaper, greener alternative for travel needs within the city. This also provided Nissan an opportunity to test if LEAF can be effectively used as a fleet taxi (thereby opening new markets for the vehicle).

In my opinion, the entire campaign was successful due to the following elements in the campaign:

1. Clear objectives for the campaign: The clarity of intent was very evident from the design of the campaign. As with any good marketing campaign, this campaign had all the classic elements like (brand visibility & PR opportunity, clearly defined target audience (Young twitter users), clear purpose (showcase the benefits of using electric cars – cheaper and greener).
2. Focus on total customer experience:  The focus was clearly on the total customer experience (right from the tweet with a hashtag), the smooth ride to their destination – free of cost.
3. Give your prospects something to talk about: The entire campaign provided the prospects an experience that they would like to share with their family and friends, thereby creating a word-of-mouth buzz.

Most interesting aspect of the campaign was the mix of online and offline engagement with the target audience, which is where most brands fail and Nissan has succeeded.

Below is the video talking about the campaign:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tYWjd0-NuBI]

Now, question is what more could have Nissan done or do to make this campaign even more effective? What do you think? Do let me know by leaving your suggestion as a comment here..