Objectives

In the car industry, the French DS has a very low international awareness and is perceived as mid-scale.

How to fight this false perception and gain awareness? 

We had to adress many challenges:

1# Turn DS into a much more considered brand in a very competitive premium environment driven by German giants such as Mercedes and BMW  

2# Create a strong message and territory to address our audiences

3# Adress at the same time fifteen markets.

The Art of Travel is a 46 minutes documentary where Seamus Keyney explores all the aspects of the French art of travel, and meets experts that breaks codes to reinvent the travel experience. 

Strategy and Execution

1# DS is a French brand and its cars are famous for being the car of French presidents since the 70’s. So our point of differenciation was unique, proprietary and rather quite simple: France. France has a unique savoir-faire in craftsmanship, art, design… and is a world-wide reference in premium.

2# Create a hero content that support a message around Frenchness and the French “Art de vivre” with DS at heart. We choose to produce a documentary of 46 minutes.

But… why a documentary?

• It’s not a commonly used format in advertising and it allows us to be unique.

• The length of the documentary allows us to go deeply in our message and to be credible in our expertise around “The French art of travel”. 

• Exploring a new type of narration for a brand allows us to embark in the project some big references such Ramy Fischer, head designer for Chanel.  They even accept to participate free of charge to the documentary, because they were interested by the editorial angle. 

3# Find the good partner to broadcast the documentary. We managed to convince Amazon Prime. It was the first time Amazon prime accepted a brand documentary on its platform in Europe.

Results

• All the 15 markets broadcast the content : marketing clients teams embrace and love the project.
• We encounter a huge success in term of reach and completion : 1 million persons viewed  the 46’ minutes of the documentary !
• We managed to get around 770 000 hours of viewing, a big win considering the price of a 20’ on TV.
• We obtain a large press coverage, especially in medias specialized about cars, positioning DS as a strong actor among the competition. 

Media