s360 & Kia – How we sold thousands of Kia EV6s in 6 months

This campaign should win because it tells the story of how brand-building campaigns contribute to selling more products. We delivered remarkable results, driving real business revenue and capitalising on market share. We did that by experimenting with new ways of driving a campaign by combining the latest technology with a state-of-the-art tech stack brought into play with compelling creatives.

“This campaign was probably one of our best-executed campaigns that will lay the foundation for our future use of digital paid media! ” - Kenneth Steel, Marketing Director, Kia Denmark.

This campaign is worthy of winning an award because we exceeded the main objective by +244% by developing a multi-phase creative strategy, combining 1st party data and platform data using best-in-class platform features. In numbers, we delivered the following results:

- The main objective was an succesfull introduction of Kia EV6s within six months. Result: 4.129 cars sold
-An investment of €194.000 contributed to direct revenue from the Display/Video & Paid Social activities of €89.970.000 in revenue in 6 months. Incremental ROAS = 46.000%

Besides, this campaign led to growth in multiple brand metrics. Across all audiences reached, we were able to measure:

Uplift in percentage:
- Brand awareness: +27%
- Consideration: +7,5%
- Preference: +26%
- Action intend: +7%

Kia has refreshed its entire brand from the cars’ inventory to the logo and has an overall business objective to increase the sales of its new model EV6.

To sell more cars and ensure sustainable market growth, we needed to overcome the challenge of influencing brand perception and preference among Kia’s target audience.

Therefore, this specific case aims to increase awareness about Kia’s new EV6 car via creative campaigns. Video and display ads show the EV6’s stunning interior, advanced tech features, bold exterior design and improved performance in a visual and dynamic way that made the audience experience how it would feel like driving the car. With that, the creative assets aim to persuade the audience to consider Kia as their next car and trigger an intention to buy.

Main objective
- An succesfull introduction of Kia EV6 models in Denmark by using digital marketing actions within six months.

Sub objectives
- Aquire +500 prebookings through prelaunch four months before the actual launch.
- Generate +5.000 subscribers to Kia EV6 newsletter within four months.
- Generate +5.000 test drives during the six months online. Internal data says that ≈50% of test drives end up with a purchase.

Budget
The campaign has a total investment of €194.000 from 1st July until 31st December 2021. We prioritised the budget in the following way:
- Strategy: 7.000€
- Execution: 33.000€
- Ongoing feedback loop for optimizations: 3.000€
- Tech: 4.000€
- Reporting: 3.000€
- Ad spend: 144,000€
- Grand total: €194.000

For the Kia EV6 awareness campaign, Kia had two target audiences:

- The primary audience was men and women from 30 to 50 years located in and around the largest cities with medium to high income.
- The secondary target audience was people older than 30 who didn’t consider Kia an option for their future car brand (BMW and Audi drivers etc.) with higher income.

Before approaching this campaign, we wondered:
- How can we position Kia EV6 as the best non-premium car brand through creatives and change the brand perception?
- How can we use attention as a new digital currency to maximise performance?
- Which creatives do we activate in the different stages to reach our objectives and drive a successful launch?

This led to a multi-phase strategy:
1) Prelaunch to generate leads and 1st party audiences for the launch of the Kia EV6 to have a solid foundation of potential buyers.

2) Test, analyze and adjust: We conducted different insights such as eye-tracking tests to see where users looked at the creative, which elements worked, and how much attention we got for the price we paid. We adjusted these learnings to the campaigns and creatives across channels and media.

3) Create hype: Through great storytelling, feature deep dives and influencers, and optimising towards attention across platforms instead of the usual reach, we did manage to higher the quality of impressions and impact-related brand studies very positively.

4) Successful launch: We adjusted new learnings continuously to keep improving and use panel data and brand studies to prove the effect and creation of custom bidding scripts for the media buying based on previously obtained insights to optimise the creatives for attention and view time.

5) Harvest demand as effectively as possible with frictionless platform checkout flow and optimise for the new digital currency “attention” to know which formats should be prioritised to maximise the effect.

However, we did face challenges to overcome:

Challenge: How do we optimize the budget across platforms and ensure to both have a high reach, high attention and deliver on conversions?
Solution: Combining platform- and 1st-party data from Kia and Supermetrics allowed us to adjust budgets weekly and decide which platforms should serve which KPIs.

Challenge: How can we use the currency of attention to increase Kia as a key part of the media plan for the launch of the Kia EV6?
Solution: We implemented eye-tracking to identify how much we were paying attention to, which elements work, and which formats generate the most attention. We used those insights for the launch of the EV6.

Challenge: How to quantify the results of the impact that the campaigns have generated?
Solution: We introduced a new set of KPIs to Kia like ACPH (attention cost per hour), CTRS, and CPMS. This was supported by brand studies to validate the results.

In a nutshell, the campaign strategy aims to build interest around the new Kia product, EV6, and trigger purchase intent among the two target audiences. We focus on a variety of different creatives across channels that resonate with the target audience to achieve a higher number of impressions and a longer attendance rate at display and video views.

We developed a multi-phase creative campaign strategy combining different creatives for each phase to push the target audience in the right direction for considering Kia as their next car brand:

Phase 1: Prelaunch: Creation of 1st party audiences to better understand which cookie-based audiences had high similarities with our own conducted audience, so we knew which audiences to activate for the launch campaign.

Phase 2: Test, analyse and adjust: For us to better understand how our creatives were perceived, we wanted to enable a heat map through eye-tracking.

This allowed us to gain insights throughout the campaign activities to constantly provide the newest insights regarding which creatives got the most attention and where the cheapest attention was bought.

Phase 3: Create hype: The key to creating excitement about the new EV6 was to optimize our creatives. Based on insights from phases 1 and 2, we saw the best performance of the larger display formats e.g. 930x600. To create hype, this format was prioritised based on the attention it generated.

Moreover, we saw an opportunity to add interactive elements that would help the users look at the creative for a longer time due to our results from our Brand Study.

Phase 4 - Successful Launch: Therefore, we made a script in DV360 where we prioritised the larger formats by weighting them differently. The concept of custom bidding allows us to create our own bidding algorithms when we have obtained knowledge through campaigns or the client, where the larger formats had a larger impact on the amount of attention it was generating.

Phase 5 - Harvest demand: This insight is a value add for the customer because we use our resources more efficiently as we learn to use formats that create more exposure and visibility.

We gained the insight to focus a lot on high-impact formats and videos through YouTube to generate the highest impact.

To positively impact Kia’s brand perception and preference as part of the strategy to sell more Kia EV6s, we launched a series of promotional creatives and videos combining the interior and exterior shots of the new EV6. This was done to give the target audience an idea of what driving the car would be like. We build a multi-phase creative campaign strategy across the channels that resonate with the audience to achieve the objectives.

We exceeded our main objective with +244% by using a multi-phase strategy, combining 1st party and platform data using best-in-class platform features.

Main objective: An succesfulll introduction ind Denmark of Kia EV6 models using digital marketing actions within six months.
Results:
- 4.129 cars sold, equal to 221.940.000 EUR in revenue.
- 376 cars were sold online and can be attributed to social channels.
- 1.311 cars sold through test drives attributed to social channels.
--Direct Programmatic/Social revenue = 89.970.000 EUR

Sub objectives:
- Sub-objective: Aquire +500 prebookings through prelaunch four months before the actual launch.
-- Results: 1.300 pre-bookings were made online doing the prelaunch and hype periods +594 cars sold online before trying.

- Sub-objective: Generate +5.000 subscribers to Kia EV6 newsletter within four months.
-- Results: 9.800 leads were generated in the period of time, where Meta delivered 7.800 leads directly from the platform.

- Sub objective: Generating +5.000 test drives during the 6 months online.
-- Results: 9.990 test drives were completed in the period of time. 1.971 of the bookings were made directly through Programmatic/Social, and 652 bookings on the website could be attributed to an ad with a seven-day click lookback window.

Moreover, this campaign led to growth in multiple brand metrics. Across all audiences reached, we were able to measure:

Uplift in percentage:
- Brand awareness: +27%
- Consideration: +7,5%
- Preference: +26%
- Action intend: +7%