SEAT / SEAT Sex Drive
Brief
Through brand research, we found that being perceived as being a 'sporty drive' is one of the strongest drivers of brand consideration in the car segments that SEAT had prioritised for 2010. This was good news as, over the years, SEAT has built a very strong reputation for sports performance (including being 'back to back' winners of the World Touring Car Championship) among a niche audience of motorsports enthusiasts. The bad news was that this sporty reputation had not filtered down into the more mainstream and less male-dominated car buying audience that SEAT needed to attract to the brand.
Strategy
Rather than sponsor a UK based motorsport event, our strategic approach was to create our own new SEAT branded entertainment property. This gave us the freedom and flexibility to create a multi-channel concept that would star the sporty SEAT Leon CUPRA R in a way that was more 'entertaining performance driving' than 'racing driving'. We decided that to really appeal to both a male and female audience, we should actually make gender the subject of the entertainment property.
Activity
We created SEAT Sex Drive, a new reality show created to discover once and for all whether men or women make the better drivers. The programme was fronted by Fifth Gear presenters Vicki Butler-Henderson and Jonny Smith and was aired online at Five.TV in November 2010. The show format featured a men’s team and women’s team, going head-to-head in different entertaining driving challenges. The two teams were made up from members of the public, with Jack Osbourne and Emma Willis as celebrity captains. Both teams drove the new SEAT Leon CUPRA R sports hatchback. Consumers used Facebook to challenge a friend of the opposite sex for a chance to take part in driving-based auditions for the show at a UK racetrack. From these auditions, 4 men and 4 women were chosen to join Jack and Emma’s teams to battle it out in the online show. The hub of the programme was www.seatsexdrive.com, where consumers connected to Facebook, created personalised show trailers, challenged friends, followed the celebrity-led teams and could watch the episodes. The programme was promoted through Five properties, alongside a print and online media partnership with IPC titles Now and Nuts Magazines. There were prizes for the winning drivers and a prize draw among consumers that took part in the online programme.
Results
The activity reached a total audience of over 1.5 million. At the time of writing, over 300,000 people had viewed the show across Five.TV, Now, Nuts and YouTube. The show achieved 5 star ratings by viewers in all online environments and received thousands of positive comments. From quantitative research, we found that a quarter of all 18 to 34 year olds in the market for a car were aware of SEAT Sex Drive. Three fifths of our target audience said they are now more likely to find out more about SEAT as a result of the activity. Furthermore, the proportion very likely to consider SEAT doubled among those who had seen the show. Specific awareness of the SEAT Leon Cupra R also increased significantly over the period of the campaign.
Latest tweets
@erenfrey maybe! Please email careers@... With a cv and cover letter and tell us why we should. Good luck!
10:50 PM February 20th, 2012
Barclays Pingit (our app of the week) hits 20,000 downloads in 2 days. http://t.co/8Bt1uO5b
06:02 PM February 20th, 2012
@insidertrends Thanks! - here is our RSS feed http://t.co/0KHrIbku
10:29 AM February 20th, 2012
