Ever wondered quite what the odour of your favourite NBA team smells like?
Ever dreamed about your favourite players’ post-game hoop sweat scent?
Well, wonder no more as your dreams have become real, as the NBA’s official automotive partner Kia is giving you a chance for your car to smell of the pungent exertions of your favourite NBA team
In a sweaty sponsor scent stunt, Kia has unveiled NBA air fresheners giving drivers the choice of each team’s ‘distinct in-game musk’.
The campaign’s call to action is that the products within this new range can’t be bought in high street stores, but are only being stocked across 190 American Kia dealerships.
A grand total of 18,000 air fresheners (air worseners?) are being distributed across the auto outfits dealerships.
The eclectic campaign, developed in harness with agency Momentum Worldwide, is being promoted across the brand’s social media channels led by a core video that includes the line ‘There are no bad smells. Just bad smellers.’
The cheeky, daft, distinctly tongue-in-cheek social video shows how the deodorizers were developed in the ‘Kia Scent Lab’.
The promotional platforms include Kia America’s Twitter feed,
Air Fresheners that smell like your favorite @NBA teams! Free with test drive while supplies last at participating dealers. #ElevateTheGame pic.twitter.com/CTVuzIILbt
— Kia Motors America (@Kia) March 15, 2017
and its Facebook page too.
With further social support coming from 12 of the NBA teams the auto manufacturer supports.
‘We worked with a fragrance manufacturer and selected from scents that we felt embodied each team’s personally and aura in olfactory form,’ explains Momentum Worldwide CCO Omid Parhang.
‘We took into account the personality of the city, the history of the franchise, the culture of the fan base. I assure you, our process was at least as thorough as that which led to Michael Jordan’s cologne.’
An agency campaign case study video by Momentum,
reveals that the campaign, which aimed to use the NBA partnership to drive fans to dealerships, distributed 18,000 air fresheners to 200 dealerships and the only way to get one was to test drive a Kia.
Activative Comment:
What were Kia thinking?
What’s next, a personalised post-game pongy cologne from Kia’s spearhead sports ambassador and basketball megastar LeBron James?
It’s a bit early for April Fools’ Day isn’t it?
Then again, we are in the middle of basketball’s March Madness, which always brings a little marketing madness with it too.
This comes straight from the ‘too silly and too freaky to fail’ school of marketing tactics.
Joking aside, this initiative jumps on the current ‘products not promotions’ partnership activation trends in which sponsors focus on products and services relating to the properties in their portfolios and then use those as the leverage campaign.
Such a strategy spans the serious (such as Samsung’s brilliant ‘Blind Cap’ invention emerging from its Spanish Paralympic partnership – see case study), to the silly (like Pizza Hut’s new ‘Pie Top’ pizza ordering basketball sneakers – see case study).
As well as those about which we can’t quite make up our minds (think of Tostitos leveraging its NFL partnership at this year’s Super Bowl via its breathalyser bag of chips – see case study).
In terms of results, the campaign generated 97 million social media impressions in its first month (including an unsolicited tweet from LeBron James to his 35 million followers).
Links:
Kia
https://www.youtube.com/user/KiaMotorsAmerica
https://www.instagram.com/kiamotorsusa/
https://plus.google.com/+kia/posts
http://www.pinterest.com/kiamotorsusa/
NBA:
