CASE STUDY: How Land Rover China collected 802 Evoque pre-orders before launch

Background

Due to Land Rover's global launch strategy for the Range Rover Evoque, actual sales did not take place until 11 months after the car was unveiled in China in a major auto show in December 2010.

The challenge was to keep the buzz for the car going and collect enough pre-orders even when customers do not have a chance to touch and drive the car.

Wunderman wanted to draw awareness from a young 30-something target audience that predominately engages in digital instead of traditional media.

The Range Rover Evoque's target audience is urban, trendy, outgoing singles and couples seeking confident, modern and purposeful designs. They are also digitally-connected to their hundreds of friends through their social networks, and avoid traditional advertising.

Strategy

'The Evoque Effect' (极光之城), an eight-part online graphic novel series, uses a combination of comic book style illustrations interwoven with live action film. It is the story of a young architect who faces endless challenges as he battles to finish his design for an architectural competition — with themes very common to the burgeoning Chinese middle class.

Part action adventure, part mystery espionage, the eight episodes were released weekly via the  campaign microsite, major video sites and China SNS channels. Each release included product details and a request for consumers to provide personal details to be kept informed of future updates.

Activities employed on key social networking sites by Mindshare were aimed at stimulating online conversations by allowing the audience to control the story, from devising their own comics, uploading photos on Douban to creating 'Weibo Bao' (personalised online posters) on Sina.

Results:
Over 8 million people have watched “The Evoque Effect”, both on the main campaign site and video
channels since 6 July 2011.

Interest in the Range Rover Evoque, as measured on Baidu's organic search, peaked to levels
comparable to its launch at the Shanghai auto show in 2010.

In addition, around 60,000 people downloaded the iPhone and Android applications related to the
campaign, while 55,388 “keep me informed” leads were collected from over six platforms, resulting in 3,000 prospects and 802 actual cars sold — a four-fold return on investment.

The campaign also won a 'Best in China' Dragon award at the 2012 Promotion Marketing Awards of Asia.