Sadly, when it comes to marketing cars to women the market will often turn to a collection of patronising stereotypes. Cars routinely have pink paint and trim. Manufacturers will claim headlights have been specially designed to imitate an eye with mascara. Marketing campaigns focus on make-up and nail varnish tie-ups. Unsurprisingly this approach really wasn’t cutting it.

We carried out some research into the young women of the UK. A survey of 3,633 women enabled us to build groups according to attitude and behaviour which was representative of 7.4 million 18-34 year old women. Once we had these groups we went out and found women who sat in each segment and asked them about what really matters to them. We found that much like men of their age, women are looking for adventure, independence and achievement.

Suzuki helped cast talent for the show, using social listening we selected household names our audience knew and loved. Plus, with driving integral to the show itself we didn’t suffer from limitations on product placement. Across 15 weekly episodes it didn’t matter who was on screen, the Ignis was on screen with them.

Those who passed their driving test in the show received an Ignis. It allowed the car to continue facilitating their adventure and independence, featuring heavily within social stories.

From one such adventure we created a series of storytelling TV adverts which were then used across our 10-week paid TV advertising campaign.

We ran a 14-week campaign calling on Instagrammers to take advantage of test-drives and create adventures of their own. It was supported by paid for blogger outreach support and a series of Buzzfeed articles commissions to provide ideas of adventure.

The campaign re-wrote how cars should be marketed to women.

When we began to set out the strategy in late 2016 we knew that change was in the air, but we couldn’t have anticipated just what an important year 2017 would be for women.

Our work was in tune with this, standing out from the pink’d up crowd it got noticed, drove engagement and importantly, drove sales:

- Sales data can be found in confidential section below

- 329,000 people tuned into All Star Driving School every week (BARB)

- All Star Driving School was the most talked about show on E4 in all of 2017 (Channel 4)

- Our TV, influencer and BuzzFeed amplification reached a further 86% of 16-34-year-old women across the UK