It was a pivotal time for Lotus. The business had ambitions to become a truly global performance car brand. A new more mainstream product was vital to plans for growth and seen as the physical embodiment of the brand’s ongoing transformation. As the new model was conceived to help acquire new customers, it brought the risk of losing the brand’s passionate audience who loved a more purist product. Therefore, our brief focused primarily on influencing the behaviours and perceptions of historic Lotus fans. We simply couldn’t achieve our order take target without them.

We also needed to drive commercial success from limited spend. This meant our Owned channel focus had to be built on rich audience insight to ensure our creative not only resonated but also encouraged people to get involved and keep the conversation going in the right places. Success would be measured in verbatims, rather than vanity metrics.

Drawing inspiration from the Lotus ‘For the drivers’ brand promise, Morse Road hides the name of the new Emira sports car in morse code, down the middle of a winding road, replacing the standard markings with dots and dashes. Driven by the insight that it was the one place we knew our fanatical audience would always look. At launch, they would be the ones to discover and reveal the name, rather than the brand. The idea would intrigue, engage and involve our audience – generating the peer-to-peer conversations and positive sentiment at launch that we needed.

We knew loyal Lotus fans would struggle with the changes coming from the brand and the launch of a more mainstream model. Social Listening had given us insight into their mindset and how they valued the historic exclusivity of the brand. It also gave us an understanding of where we needed to influence conversations and ensure positive sentiment. It became clear that if we lost loyal buyers with an overtly mainstream launch then we wouldn’t achieve growth targets.

We set about bringing our target audience in from the very start of the launch and created an initial tease phase that played to their fanatical nature and love of what a ‘for the drivers’ brand stood for. The initial call to action was simply to discover the name of the new model. An extended tease phase centred on microsite visits, registering interest and, ultimately, paying a deposit to place an order.

The campaign was designed in 2 phases. Teaser activity targeted passionate Lotus fans ahead of Global Launch events. Our starting point for planning was social listening, but broader reach was needed to make the new model famous. That meant being smart with Owned channels to make it easy for people to engage in and share the conversation. Lotus fans live online, so we prioritised digital and social channels (organic and paid) to speak to them first. Fresh content and real-time community management kept them updated. By taking them on a journey, they helped introduce others to the new Emira ahead of the formal launch.

Within hours, our teaser film ensured the name 'Emira' was being shared in closed-to-advertising conversations on social channels and forums. We kept the audience guessing by reacting to campaign chatter and drove incremental reach. A second video confirming the name was shared on Samuel Morse’s birthday.

Break-through results were achieved on 3 levels. Crucially, we achieved 98% positive sentiment in social media which demonstrates that we had successfully broadened the appeal for the new model without alienating historic fans. The quarterly enquiry target was exceeded by 350%. Emira was the most-mentioned and highest-reaching model at Goodwood in comparison to the key competitor models tracked for ongoing reporting (via Brandwatch). Ultimately, we got more people into Lotus placing deposits - achieving twice the annual target during the month of July. As a result, planned spend to drive 200 new model orders across the second half of the calendar year was reallocated and 1000 orders achieved in a fraction of the time. The intriguing nature of the creative idea allowed us to gain enough orders to sell out the vehicle globally for 2.5 years. Planned above the line budget was reallocated – driving an even better commercial outcome.