In Spring 2017, Volvo launched the all-new V90 Cross Country. The vehicle was a sleek luxury Crossover, reflective of Volvo's contemporary Scandinavian design but also carried traditional Volvo attributes of safety and reliability. It targeted suburban households and "weekend warriors." Our challenge was twofold:
Having a limited budget, and a product with niche-appeal, required a hyper-targeted approach to create awareness among a relevant audience and ultimately drive consideration.
Using only paid social (and search), is not a common approach when launching a new vehicle. To reach our target audience of high-net value, 40+, cultured weekend warriors, we decided to run an influencer campaign leveraging Jimmy Chin, a professional climber, mountaineer, and photographer, who could appeal to our target audience's likes and interests.
At conception, Mindshare, WHOSAY and Grey worked together on a creative concept that would best resonate with the target audience. Utilizing the WHOSAY Match Tool, we were able to identify talent that over-indexed with fans of Volvo, and had a high engagement score for audience responsiveness. We set out to create a series of engaging custom videos and photos that would speak to the target audience and distributed this content through select social channels: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
The videos and photos were set in Jackson Hole, WY, with the Volvo V90 Cross Country juxtaposed on the natural scenery, using Jimmy as a voice over to talk about his experience of a "life on the road." The campaign celebrated the spirit of the V90 Cross Country, showing the vehicle as a gateway to outdoor hobbies and an active lifestyle.
We placed paid support for custom content across Facebook and Instagram, and used Twitter for organic reach only. We also delivered dark posted custom content on Facebook and Instagram for custom audiences, while testing a variety of video formats to further drive awareness & consideration among consumers.
This was a close collaboration of multiple teams: Mindshare, Whosay, and creative agency Grey, but most importantly commitment from the Brand made this possible.
The campaign generated:
Another important result we saw from our Influencer campaign on social media was the cross-channel spill over: the impact on Search results and website conversion events. During the campaign we saw elevated levels of search interest overall. We saw search impressions jump approximately 32% percent, month-over-month for branded Volvo V90 keywords. Interest declined after the campaign end.
The campaign also had an Estimated Ad Recall Rate (EARR) of 6.72%, which is above the 5% benchmark on Facebook and Instagram.
