Alfa Romeo had been absent from the United States for nearly a quarter of a century while German giants were entrenching themselves on American roads. This hiatus rendered Alfa just a vestige in the minds of older enthusiasts while BMW, Mercedes and Audi set the standard.

Our objective was simple but not easy: create room on the road for Alfa Romeo’s North American comeback and convert precision-oriented German car owners into passion-oriented Italian car drivers. To do so, we leaned into what had taken place in culture since Alfa Romeo left the North American market—a loss of passion. We began to value practicality, precision and reservation over desire, emotion and obsession, both on the roads and in our lives.

Our brief was for Alfa Romeo and its flagship Giulia to stage a passion intervention in America in a way that only an Italian automaker could.

Since car buyers were most likely unfamiliar with the Alfa Romeo brand, we created a series of films that used German sport sedan owners’ own emphatic pitch to sell their cars to highlight the unique driving experience that only an Alfa Romeo can deliver.

Due to the lack of familiarity and equity in the brand, we couldn’t target drivers interested in Alfa Romeo, so instead we targeted those interested in the competitive models that we believed Alfa could out-passion. We went straight to these considerers and owners in order to sow the seeds of doubt about their precision machines. But instead of letting an Alfa enthusiast speak for us, we let current German car owners make their own emphatic sales pitch to ditch their cars and make room for an Alfa.

In the competitive, hype-filled landscape we find ourselves in, we focused on relatable humor to stand out.

The videos were shot and edited in a style evocative of user-generated classified content on YouTube. This medium, along with accompanying voice mail messages gave Alfa Romeo a chance to organically highlight the features of the competitors’ vehicles and give a humorous voice to the sellers as they tried to paint a positive picture of the machines they desperately wanted to sell.

Media ran in a three-week flight during which we laser-targeted auto enthusiasts and consumers with Alfa Romeo brand interests, leveraging high-impact units across Facebook and Instagram and sequential pre-roll buys on Hulu and YouTube.

Our scale and scope were hyper-focused, but the results outperformed the investment.

The “Make Room for Alfa” social campaign amassed over 4.8MM impressions in paid social, 1.5MM views on YouTube and 946k impressions on Hulu. During that time period, U.S. brand sales spiked +36% YoY in November ’18, including a sales increase of +13% from October ’18.