INTEGRATED CAMPAIGN CASE STUDY - YOKOHAMA TYRE AUSTRALIA
Yokohama is an iconic Japanese tyre manufacturer and wholesale supplier of tyres to Australia’s leading automotive retail outlets. The company has a very popular sub brand in the ADVAN performance tyre range which is primarily aimed at the car enthusiast segment.
With the ADVAN range expanding into car wheels, along with two new street/racing tyre products (AD08 Neova and A050) to launch in the Australian market, Yokohama needed to create some considerable buzz around these niche products - to build/leverage awareness of the ADVAN brand’s long term affiliation with racing and high performance car organisations/competition, as well as drive traffic in store to the retail channel.
Yokohama contracted go2space to engage the target audience and build excitement, with the explicit goal of driving an additional 5000 visitors to the Yokohama/ADVAN microsite over the promotional period. go2space determined the best way forward to achieve sufficient uplift would be through an integrated campaign of teaser display brand advertising in the forum channel; managed User Generated Content (UGC) across the channel, leveraging Yokohama-sponsored events; and the use of Twitter and YouTube updates to widen audience penetration.
The biggest challenge was to establish a presence for the new ADVAN wheel product in an already crowded market place. Yokohama ADVAN tyres have a bankable name with enthusiasts and racers but this customer franchise needed to be extended to the wheels offering.
The campaign started with teaser display advertising being run across a custom selection of online automotive forums in order to stimulate brand awareness before the ADVAN product launch date. Each forum was chosen for its direct reach into the target segment, the performance car aficionado and opinion leader.
An exclusive Yokohama-sponsored, multi-forum racing event to promote the ADVAN brand was then coordinated, complete with full branding rights. All marketing collateral and promotional material used on the day – from track signage, to product displays, hats, catalogues, winner’s trophies, communications pieces and competitors’ door numbers – sported the ADVAN logo and brand palette/livery. The focal point of the day was Yokohama’s donation of the winning prize, a set of new ADVAN race tyres.
UGC played a major role in driving engagement with the campaign. Threads were set up in-forum discussing ADVAN products and promoting the upcoming event, whilst YouTube and Twitter channels were set up in parallel to reinforce the message and widen the net.
Much of the initial content was driven from Yokohama’s racing activities with ADVAN racing videos loaded to the sites, proving very popular with members, delivering viewing rates in the order of 2800 down loads per week on average. Through the go2space forum representatives, the threads then began discussing the ADVAN tyre range in detail, later providing PDF’s specification downloads in response to increasing interest from members. The event provided another catalyst to spike interest across the forums and UGC increased exponentially. The results were impressive with post-event online chatter demonstrating unanimous brand affinity, with 100’s of photos posted and multiple videos loaded to YouTube - most exhibiting the ADVAN brand, captured from multiple site locations.
Interaction/Participation was measured at 5700 followers of the Yokohama ADVAN blog across the forums within 2 weeks of the commencement of in-forum activity. As a result of this managed activity and the sponsored event, these communities started producing their own positive feedback about ADVAN in the private chat rooms on the websites, still ongoing.
Synergistically, the banner ads were now receiving substantial click through across the forum network in response to the increased interest. Click through and real-time metrics were collected with go2space’s analytic tools, whilst Yokohama reported a 5% increase in site visits via their own analytics.
After a month of online seeding and promotion to build interest and desirability, a launch day was put on for the forum communities with the new products on display and available for testing. This provided fresh opportunities for promotional blogging in the threads. Yokohama gave a presentation and its sponsored racing drivers supplied their cars fitted with latest ADVAN products for viewing. This was followed by a barbeque with giveaways to promote the new products. This in turn produced further positive UGC and traction for the Yokohama ADVAN brand within their core demographic.
The campaign has seen Yokohama receive significant and ongoing publicity on a small budget. The outcome of directly driven sales from the online communities in the form of group buys was a success and measurable. The KPI of a 5% increase in traffic to the ADVAN microsite was achieved. The overall effect of increased customer brand loyalty by a vast group of influential automotive consumers is the greatest indicator that Yokohama’s investment in this campaign was invaluable in a successful launch of its latest products.