• by Alex Miller , March 15, 2006

Why live in one dimension? That's the question Lexus posed as it planned the campaign to launch its sporty, revamped is sedan last fall. Crafting the marketing to introduce the vehicle, Lexus and agency Team One took a multimedia approach designed to appeal to a demographic outside that of the typical Lexus buyer.

With the new IS, Lexus targeted a younger, hipper consumer -- the kind who might buy a BMW 3 series vehicle. Paul Ratzky, Team One's consumer engagement director, says the Lexus target is older and more conservative. To reach younger buyers, Ratzky says, "It was especially important to consider how we use consumer media and marketing. The key challenge for us was to take the idea, but execute it appropriately to the context. The target is much more tribal with peer groups and word-of-mouth, so we had to create some executions that took those factors into consideration."

Robin Pisz, national interactive and relationship marketing manager for Lexus, describes a busy target demographic that demanded a new approach. "This is an audience that is always on," she says, referring to Gen Xers who live on the grid with iPods, cell phones, BlackBerries, and more. "They are multitaskers [who] have completely bought into the reality of media fragmentation. They understand that they can get and consume content in multiple platforms at almost any time of day."

Taking that to heart, Lexus and Team One built a multidimensional campaign that used plenty of traditional media but extended them into new areas.

"The depth and complexity of multi-touchpoint marketing is what made the IS launch both unique and successful," Pisz recalls. "The effort ranged from podcasts to holograms to six-page magazine inserts to the 60-foot Reuters billboard in Times Square, where people's pictures were featured on a huge mosaic of the car."

Mixing It Up

As a touchstone for the launch, Lexus and Team One got the ball rolling in New York with the aforementioned mosaic. Using the high-profile Reuters board, mosaic images of the car were accompanied by photos submitted online by consumers. With the top prize of a new is, Lexus got plenty of entries -- reportedly more than 80,000.

"There was a lot of buzz and talk about it," says Tanya Khuu, a Team One brand planner. "The aim was to create a big splash, and I think we accomplished that."

Lexus also used holographic images of the IS, placing them inside empty storefronts in New York and Los Angeles to give people the ability to interact with the car. "People could change the color, the tires, make it move," Khuu recalls. "It was a different way for them to be exposed to the vehicle and also delivered on the line, 'Why live in one dimension?' "

Lexus seems to have learned a thing or two about media fragmentation. "Consumers are not one-dimensional in the way they consume media, so how we communicate that should not be one-dimensional, either," Khuu adds. In addition to four high-profile TV spots that ran in prime time, the new is was promoted on Lexus' Web site, thenewis.com. It also appeared on lexusfusion.com, which offered podcasts with soul and R&B music to target African-American consumers. The brand got plenty of viral exposure with these approaches, Khuu says, adding, "We tapped into the behavior as to how people use online [media] and connect with friends," she said. "It allowed us to be cool and interesting and play in the arena of the hip, young, tech-oriented audience."

Lexus also used mobile marketing strategies, creating a custom Java-based application for wireless phones using RSS news feeds promoting the is. The IS had a custom channel, Ratzky says, but there were plenty of other channels that had nothing to do with the brand. "It was a way to keep people in the loop, but we didn't want Lexus to be the main value proposition," he adds. Creating more utility for the user beyond the core message, Ratzky emphasizes, made people more likely to use it.

Apart from Web and TV promotion, the IS appeared in multi-page spreads in hip magazines such as Cargo, Interview, and Black Book.

Chasing BMW

Lexus sold more than 7,000 vehicles between the Oct. 17 launch of the IS and mid-December. It was an impressive showing for a new entry in a tough field, according to Doug Scott, an analyst with GfK Automotive in Southfield, Mich.

"The IS is making some nice gains and becoming more competitive every month," Scott says. "But the bar is set by the BMW 3 series, and it's a huge bar." The 3 series has many young adults coveting the vehicle for years before they can afford to buy it. The Lexus, on the other hand, is a brand typically thought of as a reward for a successful life, according to Scott. "The IS is in the second-tier of luxury performance competitors, but it wasn't a player previously, so it's coming up through the clouds."

Marketing the IS in the long run, Scott says, will be helped by the association with luxury that Lexus has successfully built over the years. Messages for the IS won't have to push the luxury and quality themes, since they're implied in the brand. For the IS, that leaves more freedom to focus on the performance aspects of the car.

According to GfK's research, interest in the Lexus is spiked online after its introduction. Shoppers in the luxury performance segment, who had given about 3 percent of their interest to the old IS, gave closer to 8 percent at the launch of the new model.

New Approaches

While consumers ponder a new option in the luxury performance market, Team One's Ratzky says the campaign changed Lexus' marketing style. "It wasn't a radical break," he says of the is campaign, "but it was a real serious leap ahead, and it's tough to go back."

With several other product launches in the offing, Ratzky says that the IS campaign will inform the new efforts.

"The thinking of the IS will change the thinking in all campaigns, but the execution will be different," Ratzky says. "We may launch the more conservative sedans with an idea of how particular consumers interact with media and reach them in a deeper way."

Another interesting thing about the IS launch, Ratzky says, is how the agency and Lexus approached the budgeting. Traditionally, a budget is set with allocations to different media, and creative works within those guidelines. For the IS, however, the creative side drove the budget. "We'd come up with ideas and whichever idea we liked best, that's where the money would go."

Pisz says the campaign was intelligent and insightful, as well as imbued with a strong entertainment component -- from the Reuters board mosaic to the holograms and the multilayered Web sites detailing the car's features. "Every effort was made to allow people to enjoy the message and the medium in a way they may never have experienced before -- getting them as close to the vehicle as possible."