Nissan creates a buzz in the most novel way – much respect! Many lessons to be learnt!

Nissan’s marketing team deserves kudos!

Their campaigns for Ariya, their all electric crossover SUV are truly hitting the spot and keeping with the times.

In particular, two of their campaigns are worth talking about –

The first is a lo-fi ad on YouTube that is four hours long! Tapping into the current trend of lo-fi videos, the entire video is the animation of a woman driving the Ariya with lo-fi music in the background. And yes! It is four hours long! Within days, the ad had over 1.5 million views and a lot of positive comments.

And the second is a community-involved campaign on TikTok. In a bid to make consumers familiar with the name of the vehicle (which is often a challenge for car makers), Nissan invited more than a thousand users to share videos of themselves saying the name "Ariya" with the hashtag #HowDoYousayARIYA @nissan USA.

YouTube and TikTok are great channels for brands who invest in video marketing. YouTube is, as everyone knows, is second only to Google when it comes to the number of users. And TikTok is all about instant entertainment and creating brand awareness, using a unique algorithm that serves videos in feeds in a manner that gives each one the chance to go viral, regardless of the creator.

With print and digital ads being satiated with information about products on the one hand, and consumers using multiple channels to consume information, it bodes well for brands to look beyond conventional channels to newer and more relevant ones – like TikTok, YouTube and the like.

In a scenario where there is a debate whether YouTube or TikTok is better for marketing, the team at Nissan went both ways, tapping into the goodness that both these platforms bring. Stroke of genius!

The audiences are different. The approach is different. And they both contribute to increasing conversion rates.

YouTube has the potential to host long videos that brands can use to create awareness about their products. TikTok, on the other hand is known for its ultra-short pieces. By adding an element of asking users to mention how they say the name of the newly launched car, Nissan drove engagement.

YouTube is known for massive traffic and a large number of users, with a high rate of engagement. Lo-fi music, always considered more “real” than music that is edited, mixed and mastered has its ‘imperfections’ of background noise, slipped notes, etc. – but is huge with audiences who let it play in the background while they work or study.

Nissan uses both – lo-fi as well as YouTube to create a four-hour-long ad – which creates an aura of calm, peace and pleasantness. One user went as far as to say “This is one of the best ads I’ve ever seen in my life. Very unique and I never thought I’d describe an ad as peaceful. And it did its job; never heard of a Nissan Ariya before now I’ll never forget the name. Marketing team deserves a huge raise.”

In an automobile market which is saturated with cars with various names, getting the name of a car to stick in consumer’s mind is not very easy. Nissan invited users to share videos of them saying the name “Ariya” with the hashtag #HowDoYousayARIYA @nissan USA on TikTok. And the algorithm that TikTok uses will ensure that the videos are served to varied audiences, giving each of them a chance to go viral, which in turn boosts brand recall and salience, creating quite a buzz in the marketplace.

This will certainly go a long way in helping Nissan establish itself as a big brand in Europe also which it recently included as part of its core market (Japan, China and the US up until now). Also TikTok’s user base is growing exponentially with each passing day. And on an average, users spend more time on TikTok than Insta or YouTube.

In today’s marketplace, where marketers worldwide spend hours debating if TikTok was better or if YouTube was, Nissan just showed us all that you don’t have to ditch one in favor of the other – all one needs to do is tap into the advantages of both to suit our objectives. So, all in all, it is advantage Nissan!