Jaguar, Volvo Tap Google Products To Woo Young, Tech-Savvy Consumers

To cre­ate more immer­sive dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences for con­sumers, auto brands are branch­ing out to new plat­forms to try to go beyond just anoth­er vir­tu­al test dri­ve.

Lisa Lacy By Lisa Lacy. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Fol­low­ing cam­paigns like Nissan’s Detour and Lincoln’s Dream Ride, which sought to cre­ate more immer­sive dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences for con­sumers, addi­tion­al auto brands are branch­ing out to new plat­forms to try to go beyond just anoth­er vir­tu­al test dri­ve. That includes Jaguar, which is also look­ing to expand its foot­print in the U.S. in part by appeal­ing to younger con­sumers with a mod­el at a low­er price point and with con­tent fea­tur­ing a pop­u­lar young actor in con­tent acces­si­ble with Google Glass. It also includes Vol­vo, which is instead using Google Card­board to bring a vir­tu­al episod­ic test dri­ve to the mass­es for a mod­el that won’t be avail­able in the U.S. for quite some time.


Two auto man­u­fac­tur­ers are uti­liz­ing two dis­tinct Google prod­ucts to achieve some­what sim­i­lar goals.

That includes British car brand Jaguar, which recent­ly debuted its British Intel­li­gence cam­paign. British Intel­li­gence includes a “cin­e­mat­ic” 30-sec­ond TV spot, as well as a “Why Jaguar” land­ing page on JaguarUSA.com with own­er tes­ti­mo­ni­als, as well as exe­cu­tions on plat­forms like Google Glass and Sound­Cloud.

Accord­ing to Jaguar, British Intel­li­gence is “an evo­lu­tion” of its pre­vi­ous British Vil­lains cam­paign for the F‑Type Coupe mod­el, which debuted dur­ing the 2014 Super Bowl.

Joe Tor­pey, com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er of Jaguar North Amer­i­ca, said the aim of the brand’s Super Bowl spot was to rein­tro­duce Jaguar to a U.S. audi­ence – and grow its pres­ence there – while “[try­ing] to align the Jaguar brand with things that peo­ple encounter in their every­day lives. Peo­ple are real­ly pas­sion­ate about films and a com­mon obser­va­tion is that a lot of vil­lains tend to be played by Brits.”

The brand then drew par­al­lels between the vil­lains’ char­ac­ter­is­tics, like styl­ish design and effort­less cool, and its F‑Type coupe. The lat­est cam­paign expands to the com­plete Jaguar line­up of sedans, includ­ing its XJ, XF and XE mod­els. The lat­ter will be avail­able in the U.S. in 2016.

Some of the invest­ment we have to do is to help put [these vehi­cles] on the screens of Amer­i­cans because [recog­ni­tion] is not as high as we would like it to be,” Tor­pey said.

In addi­tion, Tor­pey notes the brand’s sports sedan has a more acces­si­ble price point which “allows us to expand to a seg­ment that is a bit more youtht­ful,” or ages 25 to 54 with house­hold incomes of over $150,000.

We have to rein­tro­duce our­selves to that gen­er­a­tion and one of the con­scious things we did was cast Hoult to tell that sto­ry,” Tor­pey adds.

Hoult is Nicholas Hoult, a young British actor known for his roles in movies like “Warm Bod­ies” and “X‑Men”, who appears in the TV spots, as well as three web films that “illus­trate the rig­or­ous qual­i­ty test­ing that Jaguar mod­els under­go before arriv­ing in show­rooms or hit­ting the road, includ­ing cli­mate and crash test­ing,” the brand says.

In addi­tion, Tor­pey adds, “One of the com­ments we heard quite a bit [about British Vil­lains] was that it was ‘like a chap­ter in a film, so what’s next?’”

Tor­pey said that gave the brand “the cre­ative ter­ri­to­ry to explore fur­ther, which is how we’ve arrived to cast Hoult as a tech guru, which allows us to tell a sto­ry and intrigue U.S. con­sumers in the mar­ket of the pre­mi­um lux­u­ry seg­ment to learn more about the brand.”

In addi­tion, Jaguar says it will be the first auto brand to cre­ate an aug­ment­ed real­i­ty expe­ri­ence using the Blip­par app on Google Glass. Users will be able to “blip” print adver­tise­ments in Condé Nast pub­li­ca­tions to acti­vate addi­tion­al con­tent.

Tor­pey said Google Glass pro­vides a more immer­sive expe­ri­ence in which users can descend into the vil­lains’ lair with Hoult and look around his lab, includ­ing view­ing cars in more detail.

Jaguar is also the “auto-exclu­sive” launch part­ner for online audio dis­tri­b­u­tion plat­form Sound­Cloud.

Accord­ing to Ray War­ren, dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing man­ag­er at Jaguar, Jaguar pre­vi­ous­ly worked with Sound­cloud to “pro­mote the sounds of our cars with dif­fer­ent sound engines” and has since part­nered with audio com­pa­nies and musi­cians to “put their sounds on our Sound­Cloud,” like Emeli Sande.

We’re the only place you can actu­al­ly hear that song online,” War­ren said, which is anoth­er sign the brand is “embrac­ing a younger audi­ence.”

Tor­pey said an addi­tion­al chal­lenge for the brand “has been deal­ing with a lin­ger­ing his­to­ry of reli­a­bil­i­ty.” How­ev­er, he quick­ly adds, “the prod­ucts today are excel­lent,” cit­ing recent J.D. Pow­er rank­ings.

And, he said, Jaguar’s efforts on Google Glass and Sound­cloud reflect “some of the ways we come across to con­sumers” and “allows us to exper­i­ment as we learn how to engage with tech­nol­o­gy so we can get an expe­ri­ence and reach out to a more youth­ful [audi­ence].”

For his part, Joe Las­z­lo, senior direc­tor of the Mobile Mar­ket­ing Cen­ter of Excel­lence at the IAB, points out that Jaguar’s Google Glass appli­ca­tion also has a more con­ven­tion­al smart­phone com­po­nent, which is prob­a­bly good because, he said, “I’m not sure I would say Google Glass is a great way to con­nect with a youth­ful audi­ence. It’s expen­sive, first of all, and while most mil­len­ni­als have a smart­phone, most don’t have the bud­get.”

VOLVO IS FIRST AUTOMOTIVE BRAND TO USE GOOGLE CARDBOARDThe oth­er auto man­u­fac­tur­er at play is Swedish man­u­fac­tur­er Vol­vo Cars, which says it is the first auto­mo­tive brand to use Google Card­board to “trans­form the way busi­ness­es enable audi­ences to expe­ri­ence a prod­uct: through the lens of vir­tu­al real­i­ty via Google Card­board.”

Google Card­board is the self-described “no-frills enclo­sure that trans­forms a phone into a basic VR head­set” and says its goal is to allow “every­one to expe­ri­ence vir­tu­al real­i­ty in a sim­ple, fun, and inex­pen­sive way.”

In fact, Las­z­lo calls it “kind of adorable” and says it “turns your smart­phone into view­mas­ter view­er with stereo­scop­ic views.”

To uti­lize Google Card­board, Vol­vo launched its Vol­vo Real­i­ty app, which Lin­da Gan­geri, man­ag­er of mar­ket­ing plat­forms and tech­nolo­gies at Vol­vo Cars of North Amer­i­ca, says will allow con­sumers to “engage in a vir­tu­al test dri­ve long before a phys­i­cal test dri­ve” of its new XC90 mod­el.

After down­load­ing the Vol­vo Real­i­ty app and insert­ing their phone in the Google Card­board, view­ers will be trans­port­ed into an XC90 where they can explore and immerse them­selves in the sights and sounds of the car on the open road,” Vol­vo says in a release.

That includes a “week­end escape” in which users are immersed “in a stun­ning nat­ur­al land­scape, the inte­ri­or of the car, and the road itself.”

This escape, “Fri­day Get­away,” is the first in a tril­o­gy. Future episodes will con­tin­ue the jour­ney, Vol­vo says.

The expe­ri­ence is ini­tial­ly avail­able for Android “with iOS fol­low­ing short­ly after.” “Using the app on Android and soon iOS, the con­sumer using the Card­board is immersed in this incred­i­ble immer­sive test dri­ve of the vehi­cle from the point of view of the dri­ver,” Gan­geri says. “They have the abil­i­ty to expe­ri­ence an amaz­ing test dri­ve and look com­plete­ly around the car, they can look out­side the car and see the exte­ri­or and basi­cal­ly get com­plete­ly immersed in every­thing.”

Gan­geri says the brand opt­ed to incor­po­rate Google Card­board because “we want to pro­vide some type of expe­ri­ence that keeps [con­sumers] engaged over a long peri­od of time.”

In addi­tion, she says Google Card­board “is so portable. Unlike Ocu­lus Rift, we have the abil­i­ty to bring it to the mass­es.”

What we love about the vir­tu­al test dri­ve is the abil­i­ty to reach a younger, more tech-savvy audi­ence,” Gan­geri says.

But, whether incor­po­rat­ing inclu­sive or exclu­sive tech­nol­o­gy, Las­z­lo says exper­i­men­ta­tion is key.

I think that there’s so much going on, it’s a very excit­ing time if you’re a mar­keter,” Las­z­lo says. “Espe­cial­ly if you’re will­ing to exper­i­ment a bit as well as to reach your tar­get audi­ence. Who’s to say what will res­onate and what will not, but I def­i­nite­ly give cred­it to mar­keters will­ing to try new things and learn from them, so it’s very inter­est­ing stuff.”

Lisa Lacy

Written by Lisa Lacy

Lisa is a senior features writer for Inked. She also previously covered digital marketing for Incisive Media. Her background includes editorial positions at Dow Jones, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, AOL, Amazon, Hearst, Martha Stewart Living and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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