How China’s BYD car leaned into the Euros to build trust
The Media Plan
Chinese electric-vehicle maker BYD knew it had an awareness and trust problem in the European market.
“Preliminary research told us that prompted awareness of BYD was extremely low (12%) and even lower for unprompted awareness (1%) compared to established EV brands like Tesla (89% and 54%, respectively),” Ben Norville, senior programmatic director at PMG digital marketing agency RocketMill, told The Media Leader.
“Sentiment analysis told us that BYD’s Chinese heritage was viewed negatively within the European market — perceiving Chinese autos as lacking in quality and longevity,” he added.
RocketMill’s solution? Construct a media plan that hinged around one of Europe’s most popular events: the Uefa European Football Championships, held earlier this summer.
“The media plan made us synonymous with the Euro’s and ever-present building awareness, trust, and positive sentiment,” said Norville.
Dynamic countdown
Apart from wanting to boost trust and recognition through association with a major event, the RocketMill team was confident the Euros provided a way in to its core target audience: males and females over the age of 30, residing in cities where electric vehicle charging infrastructure is most mature.
Brendan O’Connor, RocketMill’s senior programmatic manager, added that the agency sought to “hone in on innovators, early adopters, and the early majority to attract an audience of buyers who are not only considering an EV, but would also consider buying from a challenger brand like BYD versus an established brand like Tesla”.
BYD was a leading sponsor of the Euros, and its media plan around the event incorporated digital out-of-home (DOOH), print, linear TV, broadcaster video-on-demand (BVOD), connected TV (CTV), social platforms, partnerships and PR, in what Norville described was a “dynamic approach” that could allow for both “efficiency and reactivity”.
But an especially successful element was through a partnership with video-focused media company ShowHeroes Group, which helped deliver a video campaign tailored to the UK and German markets.
For each game involving England or Germany throughout the tournament, ShowHeroes built “digitised dynamic countdown features” that kept track of the time remaining until the next match involving either squad. Accompanying the countdown timer, which was placed in “contextually-relevant audiences” online, were glossy videos of BYD cars.
Norville revealed ShowHeroes’ countdown feature was “one of the most effective elements of our campaign”, prompting a 24% increase in brand recall, an 88% increase in brand consideration, and a 187% lift in brand image.
On the whole, the campaign has led to an increased share of search in all five markets in which the broader campaign ran, the UK (+130%), France (+78%), Germany (+19%), Spain (+79%) and Italy (+53%).
RocketMill and ShowHeroes have also carried out brand lift studies and “consumer empathy surveys” following the campaign, which Norville said have highlighted “that positive sentiment towards the brand was also shifting, with increasing numbers of consumers considering a test drive, or rating BYD amongst their favourite brands”.