E-xperiential: On-line applications of Experiential Marketing

Subaru Impreza Shakedown Game: Get To Know What This Car Is Capable Of

December 20th, 2006

Isn’t it a dream of any advertiser: see how people embrace your message, know what they really understand what you are talking about and do not want to miss it? Internet provides a great deal of opportunity to make the message looks and sounds great, but a competition for audience’s attention grows rapidly in the cyberspace. How to breathe a life in the Internet ad and make it useful and engaging at the same time?

This post is a case study of how R/GA digital agency (www.rga.com), known for its innovations, managed to do this for Subaru of America (SOA).

Main page

Following our case study format let’s start form the market conditions and objectives. SOA launches new vehicles across its model line every year. Comparing to minor changes of previous years in 2006 the new version of Impreza had significant improvements. Of course that fact should be delivered to potential buyers. SOA asked R/GA to help with it and develop a campaign to support their launch of the all-new 2006 Impreza.

The project goals are:
* To build brand awareness of Impreza.
* To drive leads to dealers.

And target audience in this case was:
1. New buyers.
2. Performance enthusiasts: Drivers who would be attracted to the engineering of a Subaru, which is considered to be similar to the performance of most high-end sportier cars and luxury vehicles.

The best way to present the technology is to show it in action. We talk about performance, so a slow drive in suburbia is not a right choice to showcase it - a race on the full speed with one leg on brake and another on gas is much better ground to test what a car can do.

R/GA developed a complete on-line Subaru racing experience: 3-D Flash game and the contest on virtual cars but with for real drivers. The site also included interviews, driving footage, and advice from Subaru Motorsports drivers. In addition to playing the game, guests could download wallpapers, music, and video. And of course, they could explore the features of the redesigned Impreza.

Race in progress

To play the high-performance, first-person driving game, participants first picked a Subaru Impreza model and a Subaru Motorsports driver they wanted to race; then they selected one of three tracks and ultimately “tuned” their vehicle for optimal performance - picking the right set of tires and suspension to get them across the finish line the fastest. The game was designed to mimic how these features would function under these conditions. So, it became a fun and engaging way to educate consumers about Subaru’s performance.

Tuning

Players competed in four stages, of which the top 30 racers competed in a championship round. Hundreds of stage winners received prizes like DC Shoes gift certificates and Impreza Shakedown T-shirts. Three finalists competed for grand prizes, including a free trip to the widely respected O’Neil Rally School. The competition ran from November, 1st of 2005 to January 23rd of 2006.

In development of the game R/GA faced some technical challenges. The typical gaming plug-in is Shockwave. However, R/GA advised Subaru to use Flash 6 so 95%+ users wouldn’t need to download and install updates on their computers.

In order to get Flash to function properly for the game, R/GA used proprietary algorithms to increase Flash performance and drivability. A DHTML layering technique was used to overlay two Flash movies: one in high resolution and one in low resolution. This allowed the game to be viewed at a high visual quality - without compromising the excellent performance in the game experience.

Now let’s see the results. In R/GA’s own words: “The Subaru Impreza Shakedown had a huge impact. It not only reached the performance-enthusiast target audience to build brand awareness and consideration, but also delivered leads to dealers. The game was also a success with marketers. It won several awards including two Addies - a National Addy and New York Addy and a Horizon Interactive Award. It has been featured in many prominent marketing and business publications.”

As for me - I like the idea to build a solid experience around the new car. There are a lot of things to discover and a right atmosphere to engage people to do so. Compare it with 30 second spot inside an interesting movie.

Gallery

What R/GA says about lessons learned on this project: “Keep the email opt-in process streamlined and intuitive - this will lead to more opt-ins in the long run. Keep contest format and rules simple and easy to understand - while the Shakedown program was successful, it may have been even more so if the contest rules were a little less complex (the contest was organized in a traditional rally format with multiple (five) stages)”.

E-xperiential.com would like to thank R/GA for help with making this post.

You can race Impreza here: Imprezashakedown.com.

Have a fast and safe trip!
Stas Kravets,
Aleksandra Krivoruchko

Entry Filed under: Case Studies

1 Comment Add your own

1. Josh | November 16th, 2008 at 3:43 pm

Haha that’s a cool little game. I’ve been in the Subaru world for a while now, but I’ve never seen this before!

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Subaru Impreza Shakedown Game: Get To Know What This Car Is Capable Of

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