Here at Evolved Search, we’ve been lucky enough to work on over 100 campaigns for automotive brands in our time, so it’s fair to say that we know a thing or two about getting results in the sector. Some of the most exciting work we do are our interactive content campaigns, where we add an extra layer of functionality to the content we produce.
This extra level of engagement helps us to create some truly unique content marketing pieces for our clients in the motoring sector.
With that in mind, I wanted to share five key ways that interactive content can help to create unique and engaging campaigns in the automotive industry:
- Gamify the driving experience.
- Create unique challenges for your users.
- Take advantage of audio content.
- Add a competitive edge.
- Showcase large datasets.
Continue reading to find out more about our creative process, and the next-level content we produce.
Gamify The Driving Experience
Client Example: Are You Quicker Than Tesla’s Autopilot? – Select Car Leasing
The most visually impressive, immersive interactive content in the automotive sector uses gamification.
Select Car Leasing’s “Are You Quicker Than Tesla’s Autopilot?” puts you in the driving seat of a Tesla, but there’s a small problem… the auto brake is disabled!
Are you able to react faster than the Tesla and apply the brakes when an obstacle appears in the middle of the road? You can try out the game for yourself here.
The inspiration for the piece was the auto brake system available in the Tesla, and automotive forum discussions asking if the braking system was faster than human reaction times. We wanted to find out! The creation of the game was only made possible because of close collaboration between the design and development teams here at Evolved Search. The randomised nature of events in each playthrough leads to a unique experience for every user who plays it.
The developer who worked on the project explained: “The Tesla game has been our most ambitious development project so far and presented several unique challenges such as simulating 3D movement & depth on a 2D canvas and ensuring it works and runs smoothly on mobile devices.”
The piece is one of the most successful automotive content marketing campaigns we’ve created – which demonstrates just how appealing gamification is to the automotive crowd.
Create Unique Challenges For Your Users
Client Example: TV Car Wind Tunnel Quiz – Select Car Leasing
One of our main reasons for the use of interactive content is that we’re able to create unique challenges that you won’t find anywhere else on the web.
Taking Select Car Leasing’s “TV Car Wind Tunnel Quiz” as an example, the point of the quiz is to try and guess which famous car is in our custom-made wind tunnel. You can have a go yourself here.
The quiz is completely unique, and you’ll be lucky to find anything similar anywhere else. What makes this piece special is the mix of a well-known format; ‘guess the car’, with a completely unorthodox way of disguising the car.
The piece was inspired by visuals the team had seen showing how cars are tested in wind tunnels like the GIF below:
We thought this was a striking visual and knew there was a content opportunity waiting to be found. The distinct shape of the smoke around the car made us think, would you be able to tell which car is in the wind tunnel even if the car wasn’t there? From there, the idea was born!
Close collaboration between Evolved’s content and development teams made this piece possible, as we’d be unable to find an out-of-the-box solution to create this truly unique quiz. It’s this innovation that allows our clients to stand out from the crowd.
Take Advantage Of Audio Content
A Guide To Mispronounced Carmakers – Select Car Leasing
While most content marketing pieces rely on the information and visuals alone. With “A Guide to Mispronounced Carmakers” for Select Car Leasing, we devised a way to engage their audience by demonstrating how most people (likely even the user!) pronounce car brand names incorrectly.
This combined the perils of brand pronunciation – which many have their own views on, the love people have for pointing this out in others, and a fun bit of interactive content that pokes fun at this with cars at the centre of it all.
Using speakers from the country of origin of each manufacturer, we were able to record the correct way to say each brand name.
To make a single, shareable asset that had both survey data demonstrating how many people knew the right pronunciation, and an audio file that demonstrated it all in one place, we created an interactive infographic. You can try it out for yourself here.
Simply click the sound icon to find out the right way to say Renault, Koenigsegg, Porsche and many others.
Incorporating sound into a content marketing piece adds an extra layer of stimulus for the user that is rarely seen (or heard!) and is especially relevant in the automotive sector.
Add A Competitive Edge
Client Example: Can You Guess The Car From The Alloy? – WhoCanFixMyCar
Adding a competitive edge to your content makes it more shareable and therefore increase the likelihood of wider engagement. WhoCanFixMyCar’s “Can You Guess The Car From The Alloy?” quiz takes advantage of this.
The interactive element focuses on rotating alloy wheels, and the user must guess which cars they belong to.
Although the quiz is engaging in its own right, the leaderboard element at the end is what really makes things interesting by pitting you against other users, helping the piece stand out from the crowd.
When users have finished the challenge, the number of correct answers they gave, and the time taken is recorded. If they are in the top 10 fastest users to complete the quiz, getting 10 out of 10 questions correct, their name will be shown on the final leaderboard.
The competitive element was the main driving force behind the success of the quiz, as users share their score and challenge their friends to see if they could do any better.
It’s extremely rare to find a live leaderboard at the end of a quiz such as this, due to the complexities in putting it together. However, the results of the campaign have proven that it’s worthwhile to create bespoke, unique content pieces such as this with a competitive edge thrown in.
Showcase Large Datasets
Petrol v Electric: An Interactive Drag Race – Select Car Leasing
Finally, another situation where interactive content is extremely useful is to compare large datasets.
Take Select Car Leasing’s “Petrol v Electric Drag Race” for example, which shows the 30 fastest cars in the world over a quarter mile and 0-60mph.
Begin the race for yourself here.
Each car has eight different datapoints, covering what type of engine it has under the hood to how much the car would be to buy. If you multiply the 8 datapoints by 30 cars, that’s 240 different pieces of information we had to display in total. In a static format, it would be virtually impossible to display so much information in one place with solid readability.
However, as the drag race is interactive, it makes showing users this amount of data a breeze.
The user can click on each car and view each of the datapoints. To save space, we created an accordion-style design, meaning users can open and close which car’s information they want to see depending on which one they have an interest in.
Other large datasets that work well as interactive pieces of content include mapping regional data and dashboards showcasing industry data and micro-site reports that split information by tabs and hover-over charts.
This is by no means an exhaustive list and you’ll find other great examples of work we’ve delivered in this exciting sector across the blog, featuring campaigns in leasing, repairs and for well-known manufacturers such as Peugeot and DS Automobiles.
Get in touch if you’d like to hear more about our automotive experience and see how we could help drive results for your business.
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