They called it the Dragon Challenge: A 99-turn, 999-step ascent up Tianmen Mountain, China, towards Heaven’s Gate. The turns? Narrow hairpins not for the faint of heart. The steps? A 45-degree angle few could fathom overcoming on the best of days on foot.
Yet, in 2018, Ho-pin Tung, a professional race driver, got behind the wheel of luxury automaker Land Rover’s Range Rover and decided to drive all of it at a breakneck pace in a race to the top. Why? For an award-winning automotive marketing campaign to prove that brands like Land Rover are here to help you, the consumer, achieve the impossible.
In today’s category and brand spotlight, we take a look at learnings from the last six months of the Luxury Car Manufacturer category through the eyes of Land Rover to prove that not every automotive marketing strategy needs to ascend to legendary heights just to peak audience engagement. Sometimes, an already in-flight marketing strategy just needs to work a little smarter to peak above the clouds.
Off-road but on brand: Land Rover’s most engaging creatives
Land Rover doesn’t do “small,” nor should they. Their ads are among the most iconic luxury auto ads out there, and neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night seems to stay these autos from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. But where the rubber meets the road with the right audience is where Land Rover places its most engaging creatives to maximize their engagement with potential buyers.
In order to show how a brand like Land Rover does this, we took a look back at the last six months of Land Rover’s most aired creatives and looked at how they performed at engaging audiences. We found that ‘Climb,’ for the 2022 Defender, generated the highest Search Engagement Rate by a slight margin over spots like ‘Above and Beyond Land’ and ‘The Spillway.’
All creatives feature the automaker’s unparalleled ability to drop a Land Rover into an aspirational and challenging situation it can make quick work of, but ‘Climb‘ in particular gives a hint at the human side of Land Rover’s engineering achievements.
Source: EDO Live TV
Date Range: July 1, 2022 – December 31, 2022
Exclusions: Airings < 50k impressions, Creatives < 50 airings
When you take a closer look at Land Rover’s most engaging creative in a welcoming environment to the automotive industry, for instance, during NFL programming, airings of ‘Climb’ performed 45% better than the average Land Rover creative.
Source: EDO Live TV
Date Range: July 1, 2022 – December 31, 2022
Exclusions: Airings < 50k impressions, Creatives < 50 airings
This shows how a simple in-flight tweak to an automaker’s marketing strategy could boost audience engagement and, in turn, their engagement with their target audience by a considerable margin and without any impact on their marketing budget.
Download our free whitepaper entitled Tailoring TV Creatives to TV Networks for a more in-depth look at how to maximize your TV creative that’s already in-flight.
On the road again, sports fans can’t wait to get on the road again
Live sports are an ideal arena for luxury automakers to target car buyers who love watching their favorite matchups. More importantly, with the many challenges modern marketers are facing in the current economic climate, many are turning to live sports for their automotive marketing campaigns to maximize the effect.
Land Rover airings performed 49% better during live sports than those during non-live sports. In the second half of 2022, NFL Football, College Basketball, and Tennis drove the strongest engagement for the brand.
At the same time, Land Rover ads were 13% more effective than the average Luxury Car Manufacturer during Live Sports.
Source: EDO Live TV
Date Range: July 1, 2022 – December 31, 2022
Exclusions: Airings < 50k impressions, Creatives < 50 airings
And it was during Live Sports programming that Land Rover had the fourth-highest scoring creative, with a spot that was 61% more effective than the average Luxury* automotive creative.
*Luxury Auto Category includes: Acura, Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Genesis Motors, Infiniti, Land Rover, Lexus, Lincoln, Mercedes Benz, Volvo
Source: EDO Live TV
Date Range: July 1, 2022 – December 31, 2022
Exclusions: Airings < 50k impressions, Creatives < 50 airings
With an automotive marketing strategy that optimizes media environments to get the most mileage out of creative and marketing budgets, the next detail to consider is when.
Dayparts are like Auto Parts: Fine Tune Performance for Optimal Results
While automakers have demonstrated success during live sports, luxury automotive marketing experiences its highest peaks in search engagement during Morning and Afternoon dayparts.
Luxury Auto Category
Source: EDO Live TV
Date Range: July 1, 2022 – December 31, 2022
Exclusions: Airings < 50k impressions, Creatives < 50 airings
If automotive makers like Land Rover shift their ad spend to push their top-performing creative during the daytime, they are far more likely to reach an engaged audience. The “eyeballs” might not be there, but those that are, are highly engaged prospects.
Land Rover
Source: EDO Live TV
Date Range: July 1, 2022 – December 31, 2022
Exclusions: Airings < 50k impressions, Creatives < 50 airings
A Tank Full of Ambition: The Automakers Charging Towards The Next Frontier
Luxury electric vehicles are becoming increasingly popular as more and more automotive companies embrace the shift to more sustainable and eco-friendly sources of energy. Car buyers now have access to a wide variety of luxury electric vehicles that offer superior performance, comfort, and convenience. From high-end sports cars to luxurious SUVs, luxury electric vehicles are quickly becoming the preferred choice for those who desire a sophisticated driving experience with minimal environmental impact.
As the Luxury Car Manufacturer category turns the corner into a brand new year, Land Rover is expected to celebrate its 75th anniversary with an undeniable legacy of innovation, and with eyes forward to the highly-anticipated release of the 2024 Range Rover, with a target release date of next year. And although the EV category is already a crowded field, Land Rover has plenty of room to learn from its competitors’ automotive marketing strategies and position itself to compel shoppers to visit their nearest car dealerships and aspire to achieve the impossible.
Top Luxury Auto Creatives (H2’22)
Two Volvo Recharge models topped the Luxury auto EV ranking in H2’22.
The spots also ranked #2 and #3 when looking at all Luxury* auto creatives in H2’22. Three out of the top five Luxury automotive ads were EV-focused creatives.
Source: EDO Live TV
Date Range: July 1, 2022 – December 31, 2022
Exclusions: Airings < 50k impressions, Creatives < 50 airings
Fueling the Future: The Optimistic Road Ahead for Automotive Marketing
Advertising optimization is like tuning a car. Just as you would adjust the engine, brakes, and other components of a vehicle to make it run more efficiently, you can adjust your advertising campaigns to maximize their effectiveness. You can tweak an ad campaign’s budget, target audience, and messaging to get the best results. Just as a mechanic would use specialized tools and techniques to optimize a car’s performance, so too should an advertiser use data-driven insights and strategies to optimize their campaigns for maximum ROI.
Amongst the myriad new year’s resolutions many modern marketers have committed to (or been backed into) in 2023, the most important one will be finding a way to navigate your organization through a difficult journey ahead. Fortunately, you don’t have to go it alone, and we travel light.