A while ago I covered Peugeot 107‘s new interactive portal (over here). In that post I said the following:
I think it could have been more of a success if they changed the 1st prize to a Peugeot 107 and spent a bit more on marketing the site. I personally believe if your going to do something, go big or go home. I haven’t seen any billboard ads however I might have seen a Peugeot 107 ad on T.V. and if I did it obviously wasn’t good enough to stick in my mind or take me to their site.
I have just discovered that I was wrong. Uwe Gutschow has released his case study of the Peugeot 107 campaign. It seems they were smarter than I thought and I congratulate them on a successful campaign.
What Did Peugeot 107 Do So Well?
- They went mobile
This is something I cannot stress enough. Going mobile for any campaign will yield some impressive results. There are more people in South Africa with mobile phones than computers, take advantage of that! There are three ways you can do this:- Mobile sites
- SMS promotion (Don’t Spam!)
- MXit
- They went offline to get online
This is something that I believe is important to any online campaign. Not everyone in South Africa has instant access to a computer and the internet, the more offline promotion you incorporate into your online campaign the better. In Peugeot 107′s case they sent their finalists each a t-shirt with semacodes on them. [what is semacode?] - They used MXit
Finally, somebody realised the potential of MXit. According to the case study, 7 000 MXit skinz (backgrounds) were all downloaded within one hour. Now that is quick, 7 000 people viewing your branding in the matter of an hour. Lets not forget that they will see that image repeatedly. - They targeted the youth
Yes, thats right, Peugeot 107 marketed to youngsters. Youngsters don’t buy cars, do they? No, you are correct, they don’t BUT their parents will most probably buy them their first car. Youngsters influence their parents decisions more than you think. That’s not all, brand loyalty. When those youngsters grow up, I bet they will look twice at a Peugeot before deciding on a new car.
I am highly impressed by this campaign and I hope that Peugeot’s competitors are taking notes. The internet and mobile technology are more powerful than anyone can imagine. All you need is a proper strategy and a smart, hard working team to see it through. South Africa is in shortage of people who can create and manage campaigns such as these, so grab them while they’re still fresh.
Hi Tyler,
What was also pretty cool for the finalists was that the skinz we designed were based on their designs. Pretty cool if you’re a finalist to think that there’s a load of people out there running MXit with a skin that they inspired!
Thanks for the kind words and keep watching out for Peugeot – there’s some great new stuff in the pipeline!
Thanks for the kind words Tyler.
What I posted is a fraction of the case study which is quite involved. Dunno if u’ve been back to check out the site, but we also launched a high bandwidth version with lots of secret stuff on it.
You got the strat right in terms of also pushing a younger audience to influence their parents. But we also wanted to start getting affinity for the Peugeot brand from a younger age.
The finalists also got actual decals from their designs that they can use to stick on their cars.
The bottom line is that once you start a campaign like this you cannot play a passive role. People connect, create, share and if you engage with them in an honest way all the way through, you start building respect.
We are doing a video case study of this and I will post this on my blog once its up that will tell the full story…
keep up the good work!
Uwe
The Peugeot 107 is a great first car for a young person and kids do influence their parents choice for them, so it is a pity that the local dealers in CTN are so crap. I went to buy one for my daughter but the dealership just made it impossible. We did end up with a C1 from Citroen in Tygerberg though which is the same.