Roaring engines, screaming messages

A trip to some of the best automobile advertising campaigns that went the extra mile to drive consumer interaction

Among the various brand domains in the advertising industry, the automobile industry has always taken the lion’s accolades for their creative excellence in communication designing.

Like other creative communication designing, even automobile ads are based on an engaging idea that conveys the brand message, highlights the automaker’s USP and gives a tough competition to the opponent, which they like to call the ‘performance pressure’.

The whole tabloid edition would fall short to discuss the numerous jaw-dropping automobile ads, so we stick to a few and study the ideas behind them.

Test-Drive Billboard:

Close to one-fifth of the billboards that we encounter each day feature some automakers flawless engine, people’s car or an overly expensive luxury ride, but what is common in all these billboards is that they all usually just show a picture of the car.

While you think what more could a billboard possibly have, Land Rover has done the thinking and the result will leave you awestruck. Instead of having a mere picture that doesn’t move to give people a test-drive it had billboards that read The Range Rover Evoque, Test Drive This Billboard. Mounted at several locations, the billboard acted as an efficient tool to give people test drives and demonstrate the car’s superior all- terrain drive capability.

The result there was a whopping 10x increase in the number of test drives when compared to that of showrooms; needless to say, the billboards being the talk of the town as long as the Range Rover Evoque campaigning last. Now we know the reason behind Land Rover’s key message –Above and Beyond.

Build a GLA on Instagram:

‘Build your own’ car is one of the most crucial sales tools for most automakers and most of it happen as part of on-ground activities. But the millennial target group for the Mercedes GLA was hanging out on social media platforms. Solution: bring the utility to them, where they are; Mercedes a world-first campaign Customise an all-new GLA on Instagram.

On here, users could choose the variant of the car, its tires, roof style, grille and tadaaaa, your car was ready along with the price estimate; one just had to show the picture to the local dealer and get their car ready. We just have one word to describe this campaign Ingenious.

The takeaway of this brilliant campaign for other automakers and, for that matter, any other brand don’t wait for people to come to visit your site, reach them where they are, catch them in action before someone else does.

With the Instagram campaign, the German automaker has raised the bar for others in the sector. Approach your consumers in a smart way, traditional works no more. Agency Razorfish deserves a bow for a campaign as simple, as smart and as clever as this one.