Car manufacturer Seat has launched a branded reality TV series called “Seat Sex Drive” in an attempt to decide once and for all whether men or women make better drivers.
The programmes, that have already had over 65,000 views on Youtube and Channel 5‘s online channel Five.tv, used Facebook to get people on to the show and feature celebs Jack Osbourne and Emma Willis as team captains.
Seat picked three hundred men and women from thousands of entries and invited them to a filmed audition that saw eight contestants picked to join their celebrity captains for the series. After five gruelling challenges such as “cops and robbers” and the horrific sounding “water torture” the winner was finally determined so congrats must go to……of course that would be telling!
It is great to see the car manufacturers taking further steps in to the experiential arena with this great campaign that connects with people on an emotional level and falls in line with Hotcow’s “Get Real” philosophy.
Seat managed to give people real experiences to relive and share with their community while also producing some great, real-life content along the way based around a real, controversial issue that got people excited. Check out episode one here…
By emotionally engaging with consumers Seat, with their “auto emoción” slogan in tow, are not alone – with a host of other manufacturers focussing on how their cars make people feel.
The BMW advert below uses the emotion ‘joy’ as the basis for the whole video, declaring that “what you make people feel is just as important as what you make” and that “we don’t just make cars, we make joy”. An audacious statement but they seem to have realised the importance of the relationship between emotion and experience, and their product.
Peugeot can be seen doing the same with their “Motion & Emotion” catchphrase and it can’t be long before more start to follow suit but what does it mean for Experiential Marketing?
Well maybe it is time for more of the automotive industry to walk the walk and free itself from the shackles of the showroom by giving people the chance to form a real emotional attachment to the brand through real experiences. Ford did it successfully at the Geneva Motor ShowFord did it successfully at the Geneva Motor Show earlier this year and it will be interesting to see who else dares to engage in 2011.