1. Title: SEAT Mii Time
Category: Best use of Newsbrands
SUMMARY: We delivered a 32% increase in test drives for the SEAT Mii by connecting to our
audience’s life stage; through a cross-media partnership with the Mail we communicated ‘Mii
time’ to the right audience at the right time in their favourite medium.
Background and objectives: Connect with our audience to launch the Mii
After a ‘soft’ UK launch in 2011 our 2012 objective for the SEAT Mii was to put this city car on the
map; we needed to raise awareness and drive leads, defined by interactions on the SEAT site (test
drives and car configuration).
The city car marketplace is increasingly crowded so we needed to come up with a campaign that
would really resonate with our customers, giving them a hook beyond just telling them about the car
itself.
Most car launches start with TV activity, however we thought what if we really engaged with the
audience on their terms we would deliver better results so we decided to use national press.
In addition, we knew this audience were active consumers of newsbrands and use them for
inspiration - they were the perfect platform to tell a story and generate consumer interaction.
Insight and strategy: Our audience is defined by life stage motivations
Our target audience of 45+ ABC1 women are largely defined by their life stage; their children have
left, or were about to leave home so they now have more time/money for their own hobbies and
interests.
We dubbed this time “Mii-time”. Mii time was something really important to our women so we
wanted to associate the car with these exciting new occasions and convey the message that due to
the low running costs of the Mii, they could afford to do them more often.
To really engage our target audience, we needed to take the SEAT Mii into the lifestyle space in a
different and interesting way.
The plan: Use lifestyle content to engage
The Mail on Sunday had just launched their new supplement, Event magazine, and within this there
was a feature called “Going Out vs. Staying in”, which looked at all the big upcoming things to do.
The fit with both audience and content was perfect, but in order to tell the story we needed more
than just display.
We decided to create a sponsorship that incorporated content and communicated the brand
personality, so for four weeks we sponsored this section and ran advertorial copy in the page
opposite.
2. Print: Sponsorship activity included logos and a stripe at the bottom of the page featuring SEAT’s tips
of what to do if you are ‘Going Out’ or ‘Staying in’. The advertorial talked about the relevant features
of the car such as cost efficiency, it also included a competition asking readers to go online and tell
us how they would rather spend their ‘Mii time’ as well as whether they prefer going out or staying
in.
Online: The online experience contained further tips on how to spend your night in or out. It also
hosted the competition, allowing users to vote for great prizes (for Going Out a voter was selected at
random to win a trip to Barcelona, Staying In was a host of home entertainment goodies including a
Kindle Fire HD). There was an opt-in feature to enable data capture for SEAT, ensuring they had
quality leads to follow up.
To ensure the budget invested delivered maximum return we agreed with Mail Online a unique user
and engagement target which we used online display media to reach – Mail Online helped us ensure
the content was effective by running high impact formats such as Belly Bands (see below)
3. Results
Not only did the launch campaign perfectly position the brand as the car that will help our audience
get out and have fun it delivered on business objectives – most importantly the campaign drove a
32% increase in test drives (via the SEAT Mii website) and a 5% increase in Car Configurations – the
key indicator of Purchase Intent for the business. The site itself had over 57,000 visits when the print
activity was live, a huge increase of 106%.
Over 40,000 people visited the online content and we over-delivered on the guaranteed unique
users target by 214%. The content engaged the audience too – we achieved an impressive dwell
time of nearly 2 minutes with our online advertorial content
There were a total of 3,862 competition entries and impressively 30% of the people who entered
opted in to SEAT communications – creating a pool of people SEAT can re-contact.
Awareness of the car was up by 26% of those who saw both print and online and we improved
consideration metrics across the board:
+ 24% “a car that puts the fun back into motoring”
+ 14% “a stylish looking car”
+16% “a car for economical motoring”
+21% “a car for the young at heart”
Client view
“The Mii Time campaign with the Mail on Sunday not only delivered on the “softer” brand metrics, it
also proved the commercial value of developing brand partnerships - above and beyond traditional
display advertising. It is something we are really proud of as an extended marketing team – by that I
include our agency partners – and something we look to build on in the future”
Andy McGregor
Communications Manager