Case Study: The #Jukeride of your life
YouTube, Google Hangouts and Twitter were all engaged by Nissan to promote its #JukeRide campaign ahead of Le Mans 24 Hours.
Do you get revved up about motor racing? Would getting involved in the creation of a car be your dream? Nissan helped to make this dream a reality for thousands in its first major international Twitter campaign: #JukeRide. Integrated agency Digitas decided that the professionals shouldn’t have all the fun, and it was time to put the fans in the driving seat, and teamed with Nissan to create a social campaign which saw motorsports enthusiasts and social media fans work with ex-Formula 1 driver Johnny Herbert in order to create more vroom in a regular Juke car, turning it into the #JukeRide. Throughout the campaign, #JukeRide was promoted on social venues including Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Vine and YouTube.Background to the campaignNissan’s campaign asked fans for help to build a state-of-the-art Juke with its own Skycam helicopter – a companion remote control helicopter which docks on the roof of the car and features a camera to help monitor the moves made by a car – designed to help Nissan Motorsport’s (Nismo) team of talented young drivers ‘push their performances to new heights, and put fans in the heart of thrilling driving action like never before’. By kitting the car out with the latest digital age technology, Herbert and 10 apprentices worked together to create a unique, socially advanced car with the Skycam. The Skycam, equipped with cameras, will provide a unique point of view as well as high-precision environmental data, including ground surface, air and object trajectory analysis, to monitor every move a car makes. The resulting data will enable Nismo drivers to monitor their performance, improve their driving skills and become the best they can be. The Skycam will also capture unique content at motorsports events, giving fans access to never-before-seen perspectives of races and bringing them closer to the action.Keeping fans interested: Google HangoutHerbert and David Parkinson, general manager of social and digital engagement at Nissan, took part in a two and a half hour long Google Hangout in mid-June to update the public on progress with #JukeRide. Motorsport enthusiasts from across Europe flew to the UK and joined Herbert and his team of engineers to brainstorm ideas for the #JukeRide car. Over the course of the weekend, participants were taken to the worldfamous racetrack at Silverstone to experience what it’s like to be a Nismo athlete for themselves. Using this experience, they then worked with Herbert to develop innovative ideas for features that could be included. At this point, advanced in-car technology to monitor drivers’ physical attributes, such as heart rate and eye tracking, as well as comprehensive automotive data, were all under consideration for inclusion in the #JukeRide project. David Parkinson said during the Hangout: “The #JukeRide project is an ambitious one, but we’re really pleased with its progress so far and looking forward to revealing the final, crowd-sourced car. Collaborating with the community in person, and via social media channels, has provided so many great ideas that we wouldn’t have thought of otherwise, and which could actually have applications in many other areas.”TechnologyFollowing input from the fans and advice from Herbert, the car has an extra generator for the engine to produce more power, as well as three screens in the car which allow the athletes to monitor both physical and automotive telemetric data. The telemetric data will measure and analyse physical activity such as brainwaves and heart rate, as well as automotive data such as the throttle, braking and cornering speed, so that the driver has all this information readily available to him as he drives. This kind of analysis is aimed to enhance driver performance in a way that wouldn’t have been previously possible. Other suggestions for technology to be included in the car were more innovative. These included eye-tracking technology, to track exactly where each athlete looks while driving a lap, and adding technology to project a ‘ghost-car’ onto the windscreen for athletes to learn the best racing line.The FutureWhile the #JukeRide project initially focused on enhancing Nismo athlete performance, Herbert and Parkinson also touched on potential other uses for the car and its technology. The Skycam helicopter, for instance, could be used to record unique angles on motorsport races and events. This footage could be brought to viewers via a dedicated app, giving motorsport fans watching on TV an innovative, second screen experience. Parkinson also talked about how learnings from #JukeRide could potentially be applied to other drivers in their everyday lives. For example, smartphone or tablet apps could be used to provide drivers with data similar to that from #JukeRide, and allow them to improve their own personal driving habits.ResultsIn a month, the campaign led to over 10 million social media interactions, including 1m YouTube views and 2.5 million Twitter impressions, according to Parkinson. At the end of the campaign, there were over 20 million impressions, with over 19m of these being on Twitter, where the focus of the campaign was based. In total, over 3,000 individual ideas were contributed to the #Jukeride product by over 1,000 fans in countries such as the UK, Russia and France.This case study is part of our social media supplement, out on 2 August.