Client: Scion
My Role: Creative Director, Art Director
Budget: $500,000
Flight Schedule: 3 Months
Tools: Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Visio
www: scion.com
Visit websiteClear communication and Agile development practices worked very well to help meet tight time constraints on this complex campaign
Create a unique interactive ad campaign that would align with Scion's brand positioning strategies and specific target demographics. Leverage the CarDomain community to build awareness and loyalty around the Scion brand.
During my tenure as Creative Director at CarDomain Network, the largest auto-enthusisast social media site on the Web, Scion's agency of record, Optimedia came to us with an RFP and a challenge. They were looking for a big campaign idea and told us they were extremely unlikely to award it to us for a third year in a row. We really had to "Wow" them they said. So we did and won the business.
Our solution was to create a Scion branded community micro-site where users were presented with a series of off-beat and fun challenges that promoted user-generated content (UCG) activities and friendly competition. Traffic drivers included IAB standard and rich media ad units, blogging, Facebook etc.
Scion is a brand created for youth to personalize. Each car is a canvas for self-expression, individuality and creativity. We appealed to the tribal nature of this youth demographic by giving it an identity (Scion Squadron), providing incentives for peer recognition and the ability to accumulate points that could be traded for Scion related merchandise and prizes. We did this by creating a series of challenges where users could upload, stories, pictures and videos as proof of completion and to share with the community. Depending on difficulty, each challenge awarded a number if points that successful participants could use as Scion "currency" in the store.
Challenge goals ranged from buzzing a scion logo into your hair to dressing your Scion up as part of a Halloween costume, and community based programs like “Neighborhood Respect.” Scion Squadron consisted of goals that demanded interaction with the Scion brand in various ways. This interaction helped to build strong brand recognition and engage the user on an emotional level.
Scion Squadron was huge hit and drew mad traffic.
The campaign was a massive success by all the metrics Scion had required as well as many they did not. In fact, we achieved these within 3-4 weeks of a 3 month flight. We met Scion's primary strategic objectives of loyalty and awareness as well as secondary ones in lead generation. Of equal importance was that we met the unstated objectives of the end user by providing them a platform for engagement that was easy to use, came with intrinsic and explicit rewards, and was fun.
Workflow diagram with annotations for presentation
Example of Scion Squad Winners page