automotive

Subaru Teases WRX With 'Get More G's'

Subaru

The next best thing to riding a rollercoaster may be watching someone else ride one. Subaru is taking that vicarious approach with a teaser campaign for its upcoming 2011 Impreza WRX and (highest trim level) STI performance cars, which roll into dealerships this fall.

The effort comprises a series of 30-second Web videos on Subaru's YouTube channel that show people in the passenger seat of a race-ready version of the car. The passengers -- twisting, screaming, laughing -- aren't on a drive to the grocery store. They are riding shotgun to X Games star and Subaru Rally Team USA driver Dave Mirra while he screeches around cement pylons under L.A.'s 105 freeway (Mirra is also blogging about the rally races and Team Subaru on a Subaru.com microsite.)

Kevin Mayer, Subaru's director of marketing communications, says the campaign actually extends Subaru's emotionally centered "Love" campaign that launched last year and is intended to highlight the physical and emotional reactions that people get when experiencing the cars because of g forces, with an implied "geez" double entendre.

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Mayer says the passengers, garnered from casting calls in L.A., were deliberately kept together in a separate location on the day of the shoot so they would not know what they were actually going to be doing, and whose responses to the experience would presumably be authentic. He says the effort is also part of a much larger STI campaign.

"The new STI has big, big improvements in suspension and handling, as well as a rear wing [or spoiler] on the four-door; and the WRX, STI's 'little brother,' is coming out in a wide body, so we have these major product improvements that we are developing the campaign around."

He says that the launch campaign will include a TV ad with a similar creative theme, and that 15-second versions of the Web videos will run as 15-second teasers on cable starting Aug. 16 on channels like Speed, ESPN, HiFi, and Spike.

The effort includes "G Cards," virtual postcards on Subaru.com's "Get more G's" microsite that tout the virtues of WRX and STI and trash-talk competitive vehicles.

"People buy Subaru cars emotionally and justify it rationally; our strength [with WRX] is handling and acceleration and we needed to communicate that," says Mayer. "It came to us when we were test driving under a year ago when we saw that everyone had a big grin on their faces when they got out of the car.

"The more we talked about 'Get more G's' and the double-entendre of g-forces and the emotional response to them, we thought, what better way than to put real people in the car and show how they feel?"

The company has not been heavy-handed in promoting the videos -- which have, per Mayer, garnered some 1.3 million views in 10 days. He says Subaru got the word out about the 30-second videos by pitching them to auto blogs like Jalopnik and other enthusiast sites, as well as to other bloggers.

"We wanted to get people engaged emotionally with the car before we launch it," he says, adding that some 60 blogs are pushing the content. "We are excited because this targeted more digital-centric consumers who are sharing information online. It's a social-first, traditional-second campaign."

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