The GM Educator Discount launched in 2015 and has become the 3rd largest discount program GM offers.

While the program has a very high perception of value (90% view it as great/good), two-thirds of Educators don’t find out about it until they are already at the dealership. We needed to find a way to build awareness so the discount would no longer be viewed as some “lucky savings” when they were already at the dealership ready to buy, but rather something that could drive intent to purchase in the first place.

The challenge was to create awareness and motivate action in an authentic way. We didn’t want this to be just about “selling someone a car” but rather connecting with educators in a more meaningful way. We set out to create emotional content that spoke deeply to our audience with an extremely genuine feeling.

The creative idea was based on extending gratitude, to thank teachers and give them the appreciation they deserve, by focusing on them, and not GM.

So, we created a video that surprised unsuspecting teachers with a thank you from the ones that mean the most to them: their students. We found five schools ranging from elementary to high school and interviewed teachers under the guise of “creating a video about teaching”. Then, we interviewed their students and secretly asked them why they love their teachers and how they would thank them. We edited their comments together to play back for the teachers, on camera, to get their reaction. Finally, we brought the students in.

There were tears. There were hugs. There was gratitude. All proving that a simple “thank you” is often what is most needed.

The strategy was to take a rational discount and turn it into an emotional showcase of gratitude for an undervalued audience. Teachers face more challenges today than ever, yet they have an unwavering passion for their work. They are overworked, overextended, underpaid and most of all, underappreciated, yet their drive to inspire greatness can’t be denied. By recognizing and paying homage to the amazing work Educators do, and the impact they make on student’s lives, we transformed the discount from a money-off-vehicle code into a highly-coveted, well-deserved badge of appreciation.

The highly targeted campaign introduced a new way to say thank you and show that GM genuinely cares. The message of gratitude continued throughout the experience with emotional video content and a call to action that lead to a new, unique “appreciation” page just for Educators on our site.

We launched the campaign at the National Education Association Annual Conference in June, 2018. In addition to screening the video, we created collateral materials that featured quotes from the students, helping amplify our thank you message.

We then sent targeted emails teasing the video to Educators from our database, coinciding with the “back-to-school” season. In addition, we created OLA featuring quotes and thank you messages from students in the video.

We created cut downs of the video for YouTube and Facebook ads targeting Educators that led to the full-length video, posted on the YouTube channel for Chevrolet – the most popular GM vehicle brand with the Educator audience.

All efforts ultimately drove traffic to a new, unique “appreciation” page on the GM Educator Discount website, which showcased the video, gave visitors more information about the program, and also included a Facebook share button to share with fellow educators.

The response from the video showed just how resonant a simple thank you is within the Educator community. While we surprised only five teachers and showed them gratitude directly, it created a deeper, more meaningful connection with every Educator who saw it. The video received over 1.5 million views on YouTube, showing it had an impactful effect on raising awareness of the GM Educator Discount. But more importantly, it got Educators to take action. There has been a 33% increase in site traffic since we launched, proving that by infusing more humanity into the work we were able to use emotion to drive behavior.