Goals and objectives
When it comes to brand desirability, Lexus sits behind the European luxury automotive brands in the minds of Australian customers. With this campaign, Lexus sought to increase brand desirability for Lexus amongst Australians, and position Lexus as a status symbol. It also aimed to improve perception and association between Lexus and its brand traits: that Lexus is refined, imaginative, engaging and delivers exceptional service (Omotenashi). Lexus hoped to demonstrate how Lexus electric ownership can help prospective owners to “Live it Electric” – aligning with exhilarating experiences and painting a picture of how owning an electric Lexus can help elevate experiences from the ordinary.
KPI's
Page views, high dwell time, shifting of brand perceptions (measured using Science of Engagement study).
Target audience
Australians aged 25 - 50yrs with a household income of $70K+, who see themselves as influential figures within their social groups. The target audience care about self-expression and brands that reflect the momentum they want in their life.
Strategy
For today’s consumers, Luxury goes beyond the material to the experiential – it’s all about delivering an extraordinary experience that leaves a lasting impression.
This is something that both the Lexus brand and Lexus ambassador, chef Neil Perry, believe in.
We sought to highlight the synergy between Perry’s approach to creating an exceptional fine dining experience and Lexus’ approach to crafting luxury electric vehicles through a interview-led profile piece that captured Perry’s favourite cultural experiences in Sydney. Our campaign ran from April 27 – May 31 and included an article and a 360 audio ad.
To inform the strategy for this campaign, we referred to our audience insights and how they responded to previous campaigns, which highlighted that as prospective trend-setters, the target audience respect the opinions of their peers and are interested in the stories of reputable public figures who reflect their values. We leveraged Lexus’ existing relationship with ambassador Neil Perry, who we saw as the perfect vehicle to deliver Lexus’ “Live it Electric” messaging. We sought to capture his experience as a Lexus owner, as well as an acclaimed chef and restauranter with widespread public awareness especially amongst a key demographic of the target audience – those living in metropolitan NSW. We kept the focus of the campaign on telling his story, highlighting memories of roadtrips around Australia as a child, and his reflections on his career and delivering exceptional fine dining experiences.
Into this we wove statements on how he finds driving a Lexus hybrid model through the eastern suburbs of Sydney, noting the enjoyment of the drive, accessibility, craftsmanship of the car and the quality of Lexus’ service – all elements that Lexus wanted to showcase.
By aligning these elements – Neil Perry’s personal story, iconic Sydney locations that the audience would be familiar with, and the electric driving experience – we effectively delivered Lexus’ campaign messaging through creative storytelling.
Creative idea
As mentioned above, our idea for this campaign centred around aligning Lexus’ talking points and campaign messaging with a key figure who represented the Lexus values, and would have resonance with the target audience. We sought to create a level of familiarity with the audience, and appeal to their sensibilities as “trend setters”, motivated by self-expression and drawn to brands which reflect their values and identities.
Our article on “Making the everyday electric” aimed to communicate that Lexus ownership allows prospective buyers to “Live it electric” by elevating their everyday into something more luxurious, refined, exciting and electric.
We asked Neil Perry to share some of his favourite cultural attractions around Sydney to appeal to the audience’s interested in culture and the arts. We captured his insights about delivering exceptional fine dining experiences to appeal to the audience’s interest in dining, while also drawing parallels to Lexus’ “Omotenashi” service principle whereby a guests’ every need is anticipated and catered for.
We kept the focus predominantly urban, to showcase how the Lexus electric lifestyle fits seamlessly in with that of the culture-loving urban dweller.
Channels
BBC website and apps, podcasts.
Content distribution and promotion efforts
The content was published on BBC.com and distributed across BBC website and news app ecosystem using traffic drivers and promo modules. We also created an immersive 360 audio advert which was run across BBC podcasts. The content was also promoted through amplification partners and social media.
Results
The campaign achieved all the KPIs set, including meeting its page view and impressions objectives (with over 46,000 page views and over 14.6 million impressions), and exceeding our benchmark dwell time with an average dwell time of 5minutes 44 seconds. To delve deeper into the effectiveness of the content and study the emotional response it elicited in the audience, we ran BBC StoryWorks’ award-winning branded content study, Science of Engagement. Some of the key takeaways from a brand and product perspective included:
- 114% uplift in agreement that Lexus is a brand that offers “personalization”
- 112% uplift in agreement that Lexus is a “sustainable” brand •100% uplift in agreement that Lexus is an “imaginative” brand
We also saw shifts in agreement that:
- Lexus is built on advanced technology in an effort to protect the environment (+29%)
- Lexus is focused on building long-term relationships where owners become part of the family (+29%)
The study also found that after being exposed to the content, 88% of people were incentivised to perform follow-up actions, such as visiting the Lexus website, sharing the content on social media or talking about it with others. This suggests that our content inspired strong consideration amongst the target audience.
Learnings
Findings from our Science of Engagement study indicated that attention was piqued at moments where the audience were able to connect with the flow of the story – i.e. where points of familiarity came up in the article such as familiar landscapes, and well-known restaurants operated by Neil Perry in Sydney (Margaret, Next Door).
This goes to support the choice of featuring personalities and locations that the audience is familiar with, as people are more likely to emotionally connect with things they can relate to than something that is foreign or too brand-heavy. It also supported the approach that stories driven by people and places, rather than products, are more effective in engaging with audiences and shifting brand perceptions.