Size matters to Japanese consumers.
With garage space fast becoming an unavailable luxury to many residents of highly populated cities, size is now a big influencing factor when buying a new car. Very few urban houses have garages big enough to accommodate large vehicles.
Coming in at just under 1.8m in width, the Audi A3 is just small enough to fit into the majority of Japanese garages. But as a foreign brand, Audi was finding that many Japanese consumers perceived their vehicles to be too large for their homes.
In an effort to change this opinion, Audi came up with a highly imaginative experiential campaign to promote the A3. We love the ingenuity of this approach!
Instead of trying to drive consumers towards their dealership, Audi brought the showroom straight to shoppers. The auto brand created a pull-out newspaper insert that folded out to become a life-size poster of an Audi A3. Entitled the ‘Showroom Home Delivery’, the ad was posted directly to Tokyo residents within their ordinary newspaper delivery.
Those who received the insert were encouraged to use it to test whether or not the car would fit in their homes. Accurate to a scale of 1mm, consumers could hold up the ad inside their garages or driveways and see for themselves if the car would fit.
For added engagement, the poster also doubled as an augmented reality marker. When users scanned the ad on their smartphones or tablets, a virtual 3D version of the car popped up to bring the vision of owning their very own Audi A3 to life in an even more engaging way.
The print ad was also supported with a social media campaign where Audi asked the public to take a photo of their A3 poster in the most unusual places possible and share the photo on social media.
The campaign generated a lot of attention and was covered by more than 400 media outlets. What’s more, the ad also set a Guinness World Record for the world’s largest newspaper print insert.
Similar to Fiat’s parking billboard, the stunt shows the huge potential that experiential marketing offers car brands to engage consumers and show off their key selling points.