Just like apple pie, baseball and rock-n-roll, Cadillac is an American cultural icon but in recent years the brand has been challenged to break through the cluttered automotive industry. The SUV segment in particular has been extremely competitive as a projected 71 new launches are anticipated to hit the market between 2018 to 2020. Needless to say this segment is vital to the overall success of our business.

To help combat this pressure, we were tasked with creating a breakthrough program to drive reach and buzz of “Made to Move” the annual summer sales event. The goal was to get people excited about our brand in a fun and unexpected way.

With our heritage as a classic American brand, the perfect time to act was around the 4th of July and the heart of summer when people are in the mood to sit back, relax and enjoy some family time.

Cadillac is known for many things, but one of our most distinctive features is our striking grilles. Given that 4th of July weekend is as much about sizzling up some meats as it is about celebrating our independence, we’ll use the occasion to evolve our expertise into the world of grilling (sans the “e”).

We introduced the “Cadillac Grill Iron”, a tasteful tool made of the finest stainless steel materials and topped off with the bold Cadillac crest that could sear your meat, wood, leather, and whatever else you deemed worthy of the Cadillac crest. The item was crafted with the same artful consideration and precision as our car grilles.

250 hand crafted custom grill irons, set in the finest packaging was delivered to the top 200 dealerships to utilize during the “Made to Move” sales event and an additional 730 were produced to sell to consumers.

This special limited edition product needed to be associated with the right environment. Our solution was to align our biggest sales event with the biggest sales event in the United States – Amazon Prime Day.

We partnered with Amazon to integrate the grill iron into their livestreaming shopping show on Prime Day. The show was featured on the highly visible Prime Day event landing page and featured the hosts demonstrating all the ways people could use the grill iron as well as prepare for their summer BBQs. Additionally, we featured our marquee vehicle the Cadillac Escalade into the content and communicated key messaging points to drive awareness of our summer sales event.

This was the first time an advertiser was ever featured and we had the first segment to kick off Prime Day. The only challenge was that due to excessive site traffic Amazon.com crashed right before our execution.

Once our show was officially up and running (around 9pm Eastern) we sold out of the 730 Cadillac grill irons in less than 3hrs and got some great consumer feedback. According to Mike, this product was “perfect for making the Cadillac of steaks…it is a great quality piece, looks sturdy and definitely worked well.”

Our presence on Amazon.com during that time period helped drive additional traffic to our site at a lower cost per engagement and due to the additional increase in site traffic on Amazon.com, as compared to what was originally projected, Cadillac received more than $45K in additional media over the 36-hour Prime Day period.

Overall, this program helped the brand differentiate itself from the competitive set during the busy sales cycle, drove key business results by sending more people to the website and provided additional value to consumers by providing them with a timeless Cadillac collectable.