Nissan abandoned the standard TV, radio, print, and billboard marketing push for the launch of their new car, the Cube Minicar, in favor of a social media campaign culminating in a 50 car giveaway in June. The campaign was the first of its kind for an automaker and cost more than $850,000 in cars alone. They didn’t want to give the cars out to anyone though. Nissan opened the contest up to the public and used applicants’ information to determine the 500 greatest influencers among them. The finalists included songwriters, singers, dancers, poets and puppeteers. They were given a blank webpage at Nissan’s hypercube.ca to create an audition to win a Cube. The entries far exceeded expectations. Not only did the buzz about the Cube increase, but the artists themselves ended up getting great exposure. All of this at about one third of the cost of a standard marketing campaign.
Adding his two cents – Ben McConnell, co-author of the books Creating Customer Evangelists and Citizen Marketers says by targeting specific consumers via social networks, corporations can trigger powerful word-of-mouth buzz about their products. “When you find those core early adopters, those people who love something that’s cool and new and are influential to a larger group outside themselves. “That’s not only how word-of-mouth spreads. “But it is how trends are formed as well,” he says.
That is a great example of implementing an Influence Campaign, rather than a Marketing campaign. Now come on SA – who has the balls to do something amazing here?
A find, courtesy of Womma: 
