The electric vehicle market has boomed over the last few years. It seems like every brand is talking about it and spending millions on promoting their newly found ecological consciousness. Yet for consumers, it can be confusing. Many still have questions about the reliability, efficiency and benefits of owning an electric car. As a result, they tend to search for answers and reassurance from those in the know before switching over to electric.

After 10 years of pioneering the EV market and the first to sell 200,000 units across Europe, the Nissan LEAF was struggling against new and aggressive competitors in terms of SOV. So, we decided to empower a community of LEAF owners on Facebook and channel their positive experiences into an innovative solution that would get more people talking about the LEAF.

The EVangelists

If buying an electric car raises many questions, what a better way to answer than talking to someone who owns it? Unfortunately, not everyone can get in touch with an EV owner.

We decided to turn our LEAF owners into the most trustworthy content and media channel by creating the first-ever people powered Facebook Messenger experience on mobile; connecting EV intenders with real EV owners, conveniently and in real time.

After recruiting a few passionate Nissan LEAF owners, we put them at the center of a social campaign inviting EV intenders to chat with them anytime, anywhere they feel like. Once an intender clicked on our social post, he/she got the opportunity to directly connected to a Nissan LEAF owner through Facebook Messenger, facilitating hundreds of private and personalized conversations where our EVangelists could explain and reassure about the benefits of owning an electric car.

LEAF, the oldest model on the EV market, had very few advantages versus competitors to focus on. Battery technology was older, EV range was shorter, design was seen as obsolete. We decided to turn our weakness into our biggest strength: 10 years of LEAF sales means also the biggest community of EV owners. Proud owners, we’ve discovered, overtly passionate about their LEAF (92% were ready to recommend the car to their friends and relatives).

Studies show that talking to an EV owner is, indeed, the most convincing & reliable source of information for EV intenders. We turned our LEAF community into a powerful and engaging media by implementing an innovative, peer-to-peer, mobile, conversational technology powered by Facebook Messenger, that could connect the growing number of EV intenders to our passionate LEAF owners, reassuring them on the benefits of going electric and the advantages of choosing LEAF as their next car.

The campaign was implemented in 2 key markets for LEAF: UK & Norway. The main campaign ran on Facebook and showcased our EVangelists through short videos with quotes about their Nissan LEAF experience, inviting them, with a simple click to « Chat with an owner » if they want to find out more or ask more questions. We also leveraged other channels like Instagram, Youtube and digital display to broaden the impact and drive more people to talk to our EVangelists. Every people showcased in this digital campaign were actual Nissan LEAF owners that we selected and enrolled ahead of the campaign. The campaign ran for 2 months, from 1st of April to 31st of May 2021. We targeted a broad audience of EV considerers & intenders, the ones most likely to have questions around EV adoption.

The campaign reached 2 million people overall.

Thousands of connections took place between EV intenders and LEAF owners for a total of 175 hours of mobile conversations. Users spent on average 10 min 30 sec chatting with an owner.

Business-wise, the campaign helped increase by 130% the number of Nissan LEAF leads and by 48% the number of Nissan LEAF orders vs previous quarter.

Image-wise, a brand lift study showed that we managed to increase Nissan LEAF familiarity among key target groups : +3,7 familiarity among 65+ and +2,8 among 45-54 y.o.

Most importantly, the campaign helped to reaffirm Nissan LEAF as most trusted electric vehicle on the market : +17 pts in reliability image vs average EV. An exploit for a 10-year-old model in a market where battery technology is updated every 6 months and the #1 consumer’s fear is being let down by your car.