Insight
Just Car Insurance (JCI) is not your average motor insurer. A niche brand for owners of high performance, modified and imported vehicles, whose car is the love of their life - sparing no expense to pimp and preen it. They are highly passionate about looking after their cars. While insurance is usually low involvement and a grudge purchase the JCI customer sees the value in looking after his “baby” and her accessories. Insurance in Australia is highly competitive - a $250M category. To engage this highly involved, niche audience Starcom MediaVest Group needed to demonstrate JCI understood them. Unlike other insurers, it believes modifying vehicles is a good thing!
A niche brand, however, has a niche budget. JCI had less than $100K to develop assets. JCI customers are charged a hefty premium to protect their heavily enhanced vehicles – and whilst they spare no expense on their cars, they are very savvy regarding insurance costs, receiving quotes from three or more providers before making their decision. To even be considered for a quote, it needed to resonate strongly. The content needed to give them something competitors spending $20M+ on television couldn’t. It needed to give motor enthusiasts the chance to demonstrate their “expertise”.
Strategy
There are four steps in the DIY Auto enthusiast’s daily life. Buy car, modify car, video, repeat. From a turbo engine to supersized exhaust, Tein coil overs, twin side draft webbers and extractors, this audience speak a different language. Auto enthusiasts are a selective club: you either belong, or you don’t. The millennial motor enthusiast is extremely cynical of traditional marketing and insurance speak – they demand tailored solutions – their vehicle must come first. JCI needed to become part of “the club” but needed member endorsement to even be considered for a quote.
At every major motoring event, SMG saw passionate fans filming content amongst the dust and fumes. They captured a raw, genuine view of auto life that brands were unable to replicate –with passion their only incentive. This inspired JCI’s “Reel Deal”– what if the brand could empower motor enthusiasts to do what they loved, with the chance to get paid for it?! As an insurance brand it couldn’t do it alone – but YouTube research proved that collaboration and promotion with influential creators is one of the most powerful ways to reach new audiences. JCI identified highly engaging auto enthusiast influencers, and developed a platform for user generated content. SMG appointed “Mighty Car Mods” – well known car modifyers – as the faces of the project. They achieve 13,000+ likes and 200+ shares for any one Facebook post, so were well qualified to help build a following of auto enthusiasts. JCI harnessed their community, MCM sent out a rallying cry, and launched Reel Deal.
Execution
The collaboration with Mighty Car Mods enabled JCI to gather car modifyers to tell the story. With the boys as talent, the agency invited auto enthusiasts within MCM’s 328,000+ Facebook following, and JCI’s 100,000 fans to film compelling motor content for the TVC. JCI built a YouTube channel to collate content from MCM and the initial “How To” video achieved over 10,000 views! With MCM as spokespersons, Reel Deal transformed auto enthusiasts into Vloggers and TVC directors, with the chance to showcase their auto passion, and expertise. It provided guidelines, music tracks and creative assets for the entrants to follow – the rest was up to them. JCI endorsement among the auto enthusiast network spread quickly, as entrants rallied their friends to vote for their JCI TVC - keen to prove themselves and for the chance to win $10,000.
Making Reel Deal competitive meant a fast reach build to the most relevant audience for JCI, with a total 55 shortlisted videos from this extremely niche audience! JCI had managed to secure brand recommendations and referrals from auto influencers - even if they weren’t JCI customers! Regular “programming” with the Mods followed Reel Deal and our user’s stories and content over 12 weeks. The videos achieved huge involvement, exposure and interactions, and JCI reaped the rewards as each upload and view contributed to a growing JCI database – and this, in turn, translated into business results.
Results
The response to Reel Deal was unprecedented – and success wasn’t limited to content. JCI quotes, the most critical metric, rose 13.1% across the campaign, more than doubling the benchmark. SMG secured a further 3,027 new business leads via Facebook, and over 3,000 members to the YouTube channel. Brand awareness increased 4 points.
JCI broadcasted 55 pieces of content - smashing the goal of 20 content pieces! JCI now boasted content assets worth $1.25 million, secured for a bargain $10,000. 30 second videos were viewed over 91,380 times –over 45 minutes combined viewing time. Engagement and brand connection - amongst a notoriously hard to reach market - was further demonstrated with a conversion of 6% who interacted (industry benchmark 2.5%) , 5% conversion to “likes” (brand content average 1.5%) and 372 endorsements via ‘shares’ – a media value of $94,396 and more importantly – a direct sales opportunity.
To date, Reel Deal content remains the key driver for JCI’s marketing communications. Stay tuned – due to demand from the Mighty Car Mods and their followers, Reel Deal will be back bigger than ever in 2015!