The electric vehicle market has boomed over the last few years. It seems like every brand is talking about it and spending millions in promoting their newly found ecological consciousness. Yet for consumers, it can be confusing. Many have still questions about the reliability, efficiency and benefits of owning an electric car. As a result, they tend to search for answers and reassurance, mainly from those in the know, before making to leap and 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 looked to our heritage and large community of passionate LEAF owners (92% would recommend it to family and friends) for an innovative way to leverage their advocacy and convert electric cars intenders into buying a new LEAF.

The EVangelists - We handed the mic over to a passionate community of LEAF owners by putting them at the heart of an innovative social media campaign.

Thanks to a first-of-its-kind people-powered messenger activation, we turned traditional digital ads into networking opportunity where EV intenders could chat with EV owners, in real-time. The result was thousands of conversations where people found answers they could believe in – and reaffirmed the LEAF’s position as the most trusted EV on the road.

The Nissan LEAF is the longest running EV model on the market. That means the battery technology is older, the range isn’t as impressive and the design is lagging behind. But it is still the most trusted EV on the market. So, we turned to the large, passionate and proud community of LEAF owners (92% were ready to recommend the car to their friends and relatives) for a solution.

Through a social campaign powered by a peer-to-peer messenger technology, we gave our LEAF community of owners the opportunity to do the talking for us. The social ads, via a simple CTA and link, we connected the growing number od EV intenders with real EV owners, in real-time, and started thousands of conversations - something that had the power to persuade and reaffirm the LEAF’s position as the most trusted electric vehicle on the road.

The campaign was implemented in two key LEAF markets: UK & Norway. It ran on Facebook and featured social posts of the EVangelists sharing their experiences and inviting people to chat or ask a question in real-time via simple CTA. We also leveraged other channels like Instagram, YouTube and digital displays to broaden the impact and drive more conversations. The campaign ran for two months, from 1st of April to 31st of May 2021. We targeted a broad audience of EV considerers and intenders, but focused on those 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 (totaling 175 hours of conversations). Users spent on average 10 min 30 sec chatting with an owner. Business-wise, the campaign helped to increase Nissan LEAF leads by 130% (a 48% increase on the previous quarter).

Image-wise, a study showed that we managed to increase the Nissan LEAF’s 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. It’s quite an achievement for a model that’s over 10 years old in a market where battery technology is updated every 6 months.