Premium car brand and Renault F1 Team sponsor Infiniti leveraged its tie-up with a campaign that saw driver Daniel Ricciardo try his hand working in a car dealership.
Infiniti, the luxury vehicle division of Japanese auto company Nissan, rolled out a mockumentary style five-minute film which sees Ricciardo seeking to be ‘employee of the month’ at one of the brand’s dealerships – an accolade he first enjoyed in a video released in 2015.
Created in a hidden camera style similar to the ‘The Office’, the set-up is based on the idea that this is what competitive F1 drivers do during the offseason and sees Ricciardo pose as a poorly performing employee in a supposedly real customer stunt surprise.
The online film is actually part of a wider campaign which sets out to highlight Infiniti’s role as official technical partner to the Renault F1 Team.
The work sees the brand seek to drive awareness of its high performance hybrid technology expertise.
The campaign began with an Instagram tease last week,
and is continuing with a content takeover on the global Instagram account.
“We adopted an unconventional digital strategy with this campaign,” Phil York, senior director of Infiniti Global Marketing, told Campaign Asia-Pacific.
“Typically, video content is uploaded to native social networks. We decided on an ‘all in one place’ approach with multiple traffic-boost sources. The hero video exists on YouTube, centralizing all video views. To create traffic drivers, we then developed social-media toolkits for all Infiniti markets that leverage our owned social audiences.”
The company also formed paid partnerships with key publications, such as Motorsport, to boost the content and the work was further boosted through Ricciardo own 2.4 million social followers, the Renault F1 Team’s 1 million and Formula One’s own 7.6 million followers.
Unpredictable? Yes. A test drive you will never forget? Also yes. No one does it better – @danielricciardo.
Watch the full video on https://t.co/CIC5xazlkD pic.twitter.com/kjkxKeZc9g
— INFINITI MSport (@InfinitiMSport) August 29, 2019
The carmaker’s technical partnership with the Renault F1 Team has seen Ricciardo become a regular on set for Infiniti photo and video shoots and ‘often being on the receiving end of his quick wit and cheeky charm, we knew we could step outside traditional Formula One driver content’.
“The mockumentary style content was a natural fit,” said Infiniti Global Motorsports Director Tommaso Volpe
The campaign was created for Infiniti Global Marketing Manager Antoine Malin and Infiniti Global Motorsports Manager Paul Trouble by a team from agency Prism Sport + Entertainment London.
Comment:
This is purposely cringeworthy comedy in the style of some of Heineken’s previous UEFA Champions league stunt set-up virals such as ‘The Test (see case study) and ‘The Cliché’ (see cased study).
Actually, we think Ricciardo provides a pretty respectable performance as an idiot employee who terrorises his co-workers in pursuit of victory.
Sound familiar?
Links:
Infiniti Global Motorsports
https://www.infiniti.com/pursuing-potential/infiniti-f1.html
https://twitter.com/InfinitiMSport
https://www.facebook.com/INFINITIglobal/
https://www.instagram.com/infiniti/
Prism Sport + Entertainment London
Renault F1 Team
https://www.youtube.com/user/renaultsport
https://www.facebook.com/renaultsport
https://www.flickr.com/photos/renaultsport/
https://twitter.com/RenaultSport
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