Live Drive
Issue 19 | June 2011
Agency
180LA
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director: William Gelner; Creative Directors: Grant Holland, Gavin Milner ; Art Director: Matthew Woodhams-Roberts; Copywriter: Dave Horton; Executive Producer/Managing Partner: Peter Cline; Senior Integrated Producer: Maggie O’Brien TV Post Producer: David Emery; Account Director: Janine Kanamori ; Account Managers: Sandy Song, Brooke Stites; Planners: Sebastian Gunnewig, Brit Browning
Production Team
Production Co.: B-Reel Films
Date
October 2010
Background
For as long as there has been car advertising, car makers have tried to get potential customers to go down to the dealers. But for Mitsubishi, no-one was coming. The task was to launch the new Outlander Sport and get people to test drive it. The question was, how?
Idea
Rather than get people to go to the dealer for a test drive, the idea was to bring the test drive to the consumer.
A real Outlander Sport was rigged with multiple POV cameras, advanced electronic receivers and state-of-the-art servo motors to control the vehicle’s dynamics and sync it with precision GPS mapping to allow participants the remarkable opportunity to drive it via interactive remote control.
In short, it was the world’s first online test drive.
From their computers, wherever they were sitting, visitors to the site could take the car for a spin on a closed course.
TV, print and digital media drove visitors to the site where they could register to participate and get the feeling of being in the driving seat of the new Outlander.
They were challenged to learn about the car and while most played along, some just wanted to do doughnuts.
Results
In days more people had registered for test drives than the average Mitsubishi dealership gets in years. In total over 50,000 have registered for a test drive so far.
Our Thoughts
The robotics and the electronics that must have been involved in pulling this off are genuinely awesome. There would have been more reasons for not trying to make this idea work than there were for green-lighting it. Doing something first is never easy but my guess is that soon pretty much every car manufacturer will be creating virtual-reality experiences like this for potential customers to get a real feel for their vehicles.
This won a Tomorrow Award deservedly in March 2011 and will win plenty more awards in the months ahead. Technology that connects the real world and the virtual world which we have seen in Nike+ and Nike Chalkbot is now really beginning to take off. Exciting times!