Maintaining a position as a staple in American luxury is no easy feat but recently Cadillac has experienced declines in brand relevance and consideration with younger consumers. They view Cadillac as a car their grandfather would drive.

Beyond that business challenge, the automotive industry is continuing to explode specifically within the SUV segment. According to JD Power & Associates, there will be 71 SUV launches from 2018 to 2020. Needless to say, the SUV segment is critical to our success.

With these unprecedented challenges it was important that Cadillac created a breakthrough experience to not only connect with millennial consumers but show up in a new and unexpected way to launch the XT4, Cadillac’s first-ever compact luxury SUV. As a result, we needed to re-invent ourselves to reinvigorate the brand for a new audience by transcending culture in a big way.

Millennials are known to love experiences that push culture and are always looking for the new and exciting daily adventures to share socially. Research has shown that 81% of millennials shared photos on social media from a branded event. Additionally, people typically interact with our vehicles in uninspiring showrooms so we understood the necessity of highlighting our new SUV in a colourful, original way to have the audience reimagine the brand.

To do so we made a splash at the most important youth culture moment of the year, Complex Con. Complex Con is a platform where multiple avenues of creative inspiration intersect. Individuals travel from across the world to see the latest in fashion, art, technology and music in addition to having the opportunity to purchase exclusive merchandise and items. We figured there was no better stage to “drop” our new Luxury SUV and get in front of young tastemakers.

Millennials are known to love experiences that push culture and are always looking for the new and exciting daily adventures to share socially. Research has shown that 81% of millennials shared photos on social media from a branded event. Additionally, people typically interact with our vehicles in uninspiring showrooms so we understood the necessity of highlighting our new SUV in a colourful, original way to have the audience reimagine the brand.

We reimagined how our vehicle was showcased by creating an immersive installation experience. Our customized XT4 sat on a platform of dynamic digital screens giving the illusion that the car was constantly in motion. Using fun, bold and imaginative visuals on the screens spectators were captivated and transported into a new world.

Understanding people attend Complex Con for desirable items, we deployed timely push notifications to bring additional traffic to our area and distributed custom merchandise giveaways created by premier cultural artists Othelo Gervacio and Takashi Murakami. This included special designed and autographed “hoodies” and highly coveted artwork from Murakami. To conclude the weekend, we partnered with iconic rapper Nas to giveaway the most exclusive drop of the weekend a Cadillac diamond-encrusted chain to one lucky fan.

Visitors were capturing content throughout to share on their social channels extending reach and driving the XT4 into the cultural zeitgeist.

Millennials show the highest purchase intent towards vehicles in comparison to other generations. Since there is a plethora of SUVs to choose from it was critical to measure our first real attempt to speak to this consumer and see if we could get them interested in our brand.

With our expansive footprint we were able to reach over 40K+ people over the weekend exposing them to our new SUV while providing them with a valuable and authentic experiences via exclusive giveaways and VIP upgrades.

This initiative proved to capture attention online and offline indicated by the increases in search traffic to Cadillac.com (the majority coming from mobile) and engagement we received over the weekend. Furthermore, in just a few short weeks the XT4 became one of the top selling SUVs within its segment verifying this partnership helped successfully expose our brand to a new wave of young tastemakers.