How Nissan Grew Its Footprint Across 3 Countries with Well-Planned Facebook Campaigns

Nissan Motor Corporation is a Japanese multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Nishi-ku, Yokohama, Japan. The company sells its vehicles under the Nissan, Infiniti, and Datsun brands, with in-house performance tuning products (including cars), labeled Nismo. The company traces back to the beginnings of the 20th century, with the Nissan zaibatsu, now called Nissan Group.

While Nissan had been making steady progress through its sales all along, the rise of digital marketing platforms meant that it needed to do something different to benefit from online channels. And Facebook came to its rescue. Through meticulous campaigns across Spain, Thailand, and the Philippines, Nissan drove brand awareness across three different markets.

1. Nissan Spain

Nissan was about to launch its new Qashqai Mild Hybrid car and wanted to build good hype around it.

Their Objective

Nissan wanted to raise awareness about its new Qashqai Mild Hybrid car and drive brand preference and favourability while generating leads and ultimately sales.

Solution & Approach

For its ads on Facebook and Instagram, Nissan worked with its media and creative partner agency Nissan United to design a multi-phase campaign to increase awareness, consideration, and sales. Using Facebook and Instagram video ads and photo ads allowed Nissan to reach its intended audience at the awareness and consideration stages of its purchase journeys. The ads were shown in Facebook News Feed and Stories.

Nissan also used in-stream video placement, which allows advertisers to deliver video ads to people watching longer videos on Facebook from familiar publishers and digital-first creators. Ads can also appear in Facebook Live streams from a selected group of approved gaming, entertainment, and sports partners. These ads only appear on mobile devices and only after 60 seconds of the main video content.

With the in-stream placement, Nissan could feature both long and short video ads that showed off the new car in more detail. In-stream video ads that are 15 seconds or less are shown in their entirety, while video ads longer than 15 seconds will show the first 15 seconds before allowing viewers to tap to continue watching.

The Result

Nissan’s Facebook campaign turned out to be a major success as it led to a 4-point lift in favourability, a 12-point lift in ad recall, and a 1.7-point lift in brand preference. Moreover, the view completion rate for in-stream video ads stood at 66%.

2. Nissan Philippines

Nissan Philippines used Facebook in-stream video ads to reach a broad audience in the Philippines with a brand awareness campaign that highlighted its message about the innovative and tech-progressive features of its vehicles.

Their Objective

Nissan wanted to run a brand awareness campaign to maintain its relevance with consumers in the Philippines and strengthen its message of being a technologically advanced car brand that offers vehicles that are exciting to drive.

Solution & Approach

For its brand awareness campaign, Nissan Philippines used Facebook in-stream video ads to showcase its longer-form ad creative, tell a better story, and best position its messaging (“Daring the Impossible”) for audiences in the Philippines. Nissan worked with agency OMD Philippines to plan, execute and optimize the campaign, using Facebook’s best practices for mobile viewing, targeting, and campaign optimization.

The campaign was targeted to a broad audience of 18- to 64-year-olds in the Philippines. By following best practices for mobile and optimizing its in-stream video ads for video views, Nissan was able to reach and captivate its audience.

The Result

The Facebook campaign by Nissan Philippines was a resounding success and helped the brand attain a 12-point increase in ad recall, a 3.4-point lift in message association, and a 1.8-point increase in attribute rating. Moreover, the video completion rate was a high 77%.

3. Nissan Thailand

Nissan launched its first e-powered vehicle in Thailand on Facebook Live and ran an accompanying video ad campaign.

Their Objective

Amidst the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Nissan Thailand needed to find a way to build awareness of and anticipation for the Nissan Kicks e-POWER, hold a launch event and encourage pre-bookings for test drives through digital channels.

Solution & Approach

To introduce the Nissan Kicks e-POWER, the automobile brand launched a preliminary campaign to promote its Facebook Live event and invite people to tune in.

On May 21, 2020, Nissan Thailand debuted the vehicle during a 20-minute livestream. It included messages from the company’s president and vice president of marketing, fully explained the car’s features and the science behind the e-powered engine technology, and unveiled the price point and color options for the first time.

After the Facebook Live event, Nissan Thailand ran a mobile-first video ads campaign optimized to drive awareness, consideration, and acquisition for the new vehicle. The videos highlighted the key features of the Nissan Kicks e-POWER to differentiate it from competitors.

The Result

Nissan Thailand’s Facebook campaign performed outstandingly well to register a 7-point increase in top-of-mind awareness and a 4-point increase in ad recall across Facebook and TV. Also, there was a 32% increase in brochure downloads on the website.

Bottom Line

Facebook is undeniably the most popular marketing platform today for quite some time. With its broad range of features like photo and video ads, custom and lookalike audiences, Instant Experience, and ads in stories, Facebook can give any brand the essential facelift that they need to make a mark in today’s fiercely competitive landscape. All that you need is a solid marketing plan and impressive content to back it up with- just like Nissan did with its ingenuous Facebook campaigns across Spain, Thailand, and the Philippines.