Marketing Communications

208 CHAPTER 7 ADVERTISING

In 2006, Nissan’s sales were sliding. It decided to withdraw its Almera and launch a new car for the city segment

that had to replace the vacuum left by the Almera. Moreover, the new car formed a nice opportunity for Nissan to

take in younger customers. Almera’s customer base consisted more of older consumers and, because Nissan did

not want to grow old with its consumers, it had to make sure to regularly take in young consumers. To this end,

Nissan developed a car that stood out: a combination of a passenger car with the styling of an SUV, a tough car that

at the same time was urbanproof.

To help generate sales of 93 000 units across European markets, drive awareness and interest in the Qashqai,

attract new, younger consumers with whom Nissan had never connected before, and to avoid cannibalisation of the

Nissan’s 4 × 4 X-trail, Nissan created a two-phase communications programme. The target group consisted of

25–35 year old, urbanite males in 21 European markets. A consumer insight was that these males enjoy the city and

all the challenges it brings; they like to rule the city. Moreover, they want to stand out, and attitude and style are

more important to them than functionality. In the pre-launch phase the objective mainly consisted of building

awareness. In view of the target group, an online campaign was deemed to be most effective. Therefore, Nissan

used viral films with a focus on branding and product details, an official website and blogs on which debates were

stimulated. In the second phase, a clear positioning or brand meaning was built to further increase awareness and

trigger interest. At this stage, a real integrated campaign was deemed to be most suitable. The communications

budget, which was 50% smaller than its strongest competitors (such as the VW Golf), was divided as follows:

48% TV advertising, 13% online, 18% outdoor, 15% print and 6% other. Nissan took over metro stations, wrapped

cinemas, used digital floor media at train stations, launched an event and invested in PR. The idea behind the

campaign was ‘urbanproof ’. Keeping the consumer insights in mind, Nissan wanted to link the toughness of the car

with the target group’s attitude of wanting to conquer the city. The TV ad, for example, featured the car being used

as a skateboard and showed its agility at getting around, parking, etc., in a busy city centre. By positioning the

Qashqai as urban, Nissan also differentiated the car from the X-trail.

The campaign was very effective in the sense that within two months it became Nissan’s top-selling model,

without cannibalising the X-trail, and taking in many new, young customers. Between March 2007 and March

2008, 24% of Nissan’s cars sold were a Qashqai. The second and third best-selling models were Note with 16%

and Micra with 14%. The campaign was awarded a Gold Euro Effie.^15

BUSINESS INSIGHT

Nissan Qashqai: ‘urbanproof ’ for city conquerors

Source : Reproduced with permission of Nissan.

Luxembourg fi xed-line operator, TELE2 AB, was well aware of the fact that heavy phone

users are sensitive about the cost that the phone represents in their monthly household

budget. Th ese heavy users would love to call more if they did not have to worry about the

cost. Th erefore, TELE2 positions itself on the promise of providing the ‘best price off er’ and

the ‘most simple and clear off er’. A pan-European campaign with the slogan ‘TELE2, simply

phone for less’ proved to be very successful in France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland

and the Netherlands.^14

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