2015 Silver Best Customer Acquisition Campaign

Karmarama

Honda

King of the Hell

The Team

Yetunde Smith, Paul Runza, Freya Garner, Jennifer Shuker, Stephanie Moore, Natalie Evans, Alison Verrall, Rachel Banks, Sam Perez, William Butterworth, Adam Atkinson, Louise Whitehead, Stephen Welsh, Monika Kawai, Jo Jenkins, Paul Zeidler, Matthew Brown, David Killick

Contributors

Saddington Baynes - CGI & Re-touching, Starcom Mediavest Group - Media Planning & Buying, TRO - Event Management

Campaign overview

Despite Honda’s heritage with sporty hatches, its Civic TypeR audience saw the brand as one for older generations more comfortable in a Honda Jazz. But the TypeR is the anomaly in Honda’s range: the one that’s designed to be driven ‘like you stole it’.

King of the Hell broke through its audience’s perceptions to create an intense brand attitude that delivered huge immediate results and a valuable new long-term customer base.

Strategy

Leveraging a great customer insight that young petrol-heads believe themselves to be superior drivers to the rest of us, Honda rejected the category norms for launching a new car. Instead of telling its audience how great the car was, Honda asked them if they were great enough for the 167mph TypeR.

Honda used the car’s world record pace around the notorious Nürburgring race track, nicknamed The Green Hell, to challenge petrol-heads and backstreet racers to prove they had what it takes to tame the TypeR – and to put down £33,000 for a first-hand car, something this audience was not known for.

Creativity

The campaign got dealers out from behind their desks and into the target’s natural environment: the carparks, shopping centres and car festivals of Britain. Here, Honda challenged boy-racers to take on its Nürburgring simulator for the chance to win a car.

Social advertising targeted hot-hatch lovers sitting in fast-food carparks after 9pm. Car-porn sites like Evo and forums like Piston Heads promoted the challenge. A propensity model was used to target database contacts with the TypeR profile and funds. An online hub communicated the location and time of events, boasted a social leader-board and served up bespoke content. An app captured racers’ details to trigger an automated email programme, weekly communications promoted the features that make TypeR so eye-wateringly quick and dealers followed up with personal road-test invites.

Results

The campaign sold two-thirds of its annual target in the first two months, generating over £12 million of revenue, an ROMI revenue level of 39.76 and profit level of 0.82.

With Honda’s retention rate, this is expected to generate a further £5.8 million revenue over the next seven years.

Visits to the TypeR website shot up 2900% during the campaign launch month, with an 81% increase in requests for test drives.

The campaign was also a huge success internally within Honda, improving the relationship between marketing and dealerships. Demanding dealers still call, but instead of waiting behind their desks for marketing to drive prospects to them, they’re asking for more campaigns like TypeR that give them an excuse to get into their community and start a conversation about Honda.