• by Karl Greenberg , September 25, 2013

First off, the automaker has partnered with Amazon for a program that gets shoppers to consider a car with their new futon, or shoes, or whatever they’re mulling. The program includes an Amazon page for the car and an offer of a $1,000 gift card with purchase or ease of the car. The program gets a supporting ad push on the digital shopping and lifestyle behemoth and on Kindle Fire, with links to the Versa Note Amazon page.

Note to dealers: No, Nissan isn't actually selling the car on Amazon, so don't lawyer up. In fact, the project ushers participants down the funnel to dealers’ marble floors via an online concierge at the Amazon page, who connects the shopper to the dealer, with user selecting the dealership, and makes the introduction.

Here's the cool part. Once the deal is made, the dealer delivers the car Amazon-style in a huge cardboard box complete with the the Amazon "smile" logo emblazoned on it. 

As for the Vevo program. Well, since Versa Note is the kind of compact car Nissan would very much like to see in active-lifestyle 20- and 30-somethings’ driveways, especially since it has a larger interior space than the late model, there pretty much has to be video play. Last year and this year, the company experimented with that in the six- and 15-second smartphone democracy of Vine and Instagram. In the new program, which, like the above, is wrangled by AOR TBWA\Chiat\Day, high-production value for both traditional Web screen format, plus tablet, mobile and connected TV takes precedence.

The "Nissan Tracks" campaign puts three major music artists in front of the camera covering summer hits by even bigger names. The first, starting on Wednesday is Skylar Grey doing Daft Punk's "Get Lucky." Later, a rock band, Mona, will star in a Vevo video doing Rihanna’s “Stay.” 

Nissan said it chose Vevo because of its young audience demo, and its 54 million unique visitors each month, making it the top music platform on the Web. Vevo says it’s the top music platform on the web and over 50% of its U.S. views are on mobile devices. And it makes its own narrative content: some 2,000 episodes of originals with north of 850 million views, per the platform.

Jonathan Carson, chief revenue officer at VEVO, said the Nissan program is the first time the channel has ever worked directly with an artist to cover an existing song and music video.

Jon Brancheau, VP marketing at the automaker, said music's an important touch point for younger consumers born in the ’80's (as it is for everyone). “Music is a big passion for the Versa Note audience, and VEVO was a natural fit for us to partner with."