Nissan Canada held simultaneous events in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver last night to honour the winners of its Hypercube online contest.
Fifty contestants were awarded 2009 Nissan Cube vehicles at the club events for their performance in a competition that began in March. After more than 7,000 consumers filled out an online entry form, Nissan and Toronto agency Capital C pared the list down to 500 finalists, who were then asked to “audition” by creating and regularly updating personalized contest web pages accessible from the Hypercube.ca website.
Voting by site visitors, along with input from a judging panel, determined the 50 winning entries.
Nissan’s objective in the campaign was to discover a group of consumers who were especially active in online social circles. Accordingly, the winners are expected to post regular updates about their experiences with the Cube through Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites, as well as a post-contest version of the Hypercube site.
Donna Trawinski, corporate manager, marketing for Nissan Canada, said contestants came from a variety of geographic and demographic backgrounds, with teenagers not yet allowed to drive joining middle-aged consumers in the competition.
There was value for Nissan in receiving even those entries from consumers who do not have the financial resources to buy a car, she added.
“Even in traditional launches, you have your target demographic but when you go back and analyze who’s actually purchased the vehicle, it’s often very different from that,” she said. “It’s always good to get word of mouth from [young] folks—it helps spread the word and get us out there.”
The contest generated more than 250,000 online votes, as well as 117,000 unique visitors to Hypercube.ca and 3,000 followers on Twitter. The finalists’ web pages drew 1.4 million views from site visitors.
Trawinski said the details of how the winners will promote the Cube are still being finalized.
