Both challenge and brief work hand-in-hand. We were tasked to launch the extremely fast SE-R in a way that would get the target (fast car-loving men between 22-35) excited about the car. Unfortunately, the Canadian governing body policing the advertising industry recently passed rules disallowing the portrayal of fast cars going fast in traditional media such as TV. No way would we be allowed to show a radio-controlled, 1/12th scale SE-R ripping it up. Seeing as the rules don’t apply to digital, we took the show online. Our solution? To shoot what would appear to be a typical car commercial, called “Drift”, with a 1/12 scale radio-controlled Sentra SE-R tearing through the streets. But we took it furthur. The entire shoot was 1/12th scale; the camera cars, the helicopters, the cameras themselves, everything was pint-sized to trick the viewer.

The SE-R Project had many parts. There was the viral film “Drift”, a “Making Of…” documentary on Nissan branded Youtube channel, pre-roll video for auto enthusiast sites like Top Gear, and banners, plus 10 second teasers for TV broadcast. We started by seeding “Drift” to blogs, then two weeks later rolled out all the other channels.

The SE-R project has been a big hit, so much so our results were three to four times, sometimes more, ahead of projections. In three weeks alone, “Drift” was seen 663,390 times (Visible Measures Viral Tracking Study), “The Making Of…” 120,124 times. We were posted on over 363 blogs, big names like Motor Trend and Jalopnik. The client saw an incredible uptick in their business. Visits to the Sentra SE-R page on their website were up 900%, and sales have been up 60%; both of these measures are up from last year, which was a record year for them.