automotive

Land Rover Journeys With Discovery Sport In Largest Digital Campaign To Date

Land Rover has tapped four influencers to take four journeys. The voyages, which are documented in a cross-channel program, are central to the automaker’s largest-ever U.S. digital campaign. 

Spotlighting the Discovery Sport SUV, the campaign, “Bred for Adventure,” positions the vehicle as the conveyance through the adventurous life — however one might define it — with a focus on capability and versatility.

The effort includes a TV spot about a particularly arcadian wedding, with rain, but the critical landscape is online. Land Rover is appealing to Millennials in their late 20s and early 30s — a first for the brand — so the strategy is to offer digital content with value and utility across all screens, notes Kim Kyaw, digital marketing and social media manager at Land Rover North America. “We have tried to make it as screen agnostic as possible, particularly with mobile, which is so important for Millennials. And at Land Rover our target already tends to be younger and affluent.” 

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She notes that the influencers generated visual content for their own blogs and for Land Rover’s dedicated microsite. The content went live on July 2. She tells Marketing Daily that the company chose the influencers, who shot video and photos and blogged about their journeys, based on their visual work and their fan base. “We reached out to them because of the types of photos they took during their own adventures, and they have a great following and had the right imagery.” She adds that Land Rover provided the Discovery Sport vehicles. 

The chosen four each took multi-day trips to places like Glacier National Park in Montana, and Appalachian mountains; Land Rover also shot imagery, including a 360-degree views derived from content shot on location. Those images, on the Web site and ad units, enable consumers to explore the interior or exterior of the Discovery Sport in the natural setting where they were shot. 

The Mahwah, N.J.-based automaker is also partnering with Instagram to leverage the social channel’s new panoramic feature, with interactive tiles that include videos and detail photos of the adventures. 

And the campaign, via Y&R, and Wunderman (since replaced by in-house agency Spark44), involves a separate native content partnership via Mindshare, with Time, Inc.  initially involving three long-form narrative videos about explorations out of the ordinary, such as where to go to get a pure view, unblemished by light pollution, of the night sky. There are associated infographics and articles; but also, Kyaw says, a corresponding mobile app utility with FourSquare and Pocket Ranger, where users can find local experiences. The partnership includes branded content across a range of Time, Inc. publications. 

And Land Rover says it will be the first auto brand to use Pandora’s sponsored listening ad product, allowing listeners to review an hour of uninterrupted music if they either watch a short ad featuring the Discovery Sport or interact with a digital image of the Discovery Sport for 15 seconds.

Says Kyaw: “We wanted to create content to appeal to an adventurous lifestyle and mindset. So we worked with Time, Inc. on how to provide rare experiences, and provide people with utility to engage with those experiences on their own. Everything from the ad units with a 360-degree experience to the Instagram and the Pandora campaigns offer utility.” Some of the content includes instructions on skills like how to start a fire, or filet a fish, or find a pristine night sky. “It all ties together.”

The effort also involves content partnerships with Vox, The Daily Beast’s “Escapes,” and Refinery29’s “Drop Everything and Go.”

1 comment about "Land Rover Journeys With Discovery Sport In Largest Digital Campaign To Date ".
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  1. Larry Meador from evok, July 6, 2015 at 8:15 a.m.

    I like the native content and the blogging could be cool, but don't over-synthesize it - keep it real, and millenials will gravitate towards it. I'm very curious to see how this work out for the brand.

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