F-TYPE: DRIVING IN THE DIGITAL DOMAIN

From Shazam to Smart TV, from Facebook to Covert Affairs, Jaguar North America is breaking new ground in the digital world to tell sports car lovers that it’s ‘Your Turn’ to try‑out the all‑new Jaguar F‑TYPE sports car. Joe Torpey, Jaguar Communications Manager at Jaguar North America explains the strategy.

Give us some background on Jaguar’s ‘Your Turn’ campaign?
The ‘Your Turn’ campaign is saying to our target F‑TYPE buyer ‑ roughly 35 to 54 years old, primarily male, passionate about cars as well as sports and travel ‑ that it’s their turn to get behind the wheel of the first true sports car from Jaguar in 50 years and have fun in this dynamic car.

How challenging is it to connect with this new generation of buyers?
The way we launch a new car today is very different then it was even just 10 years ago. Traditional TV spots and print campaigns don’t have the same effect any more. Now it’s all about breaking through the clutter with intriguing and innovative content like our short film ‘Desire’ with actor Damian Lewis. It’s also about providing content based on how people consume their information; from smart phones, to laptops, to tablets, to Smart TVs and to home and office desktops.

What kind of new media content have you been creating?
I mentioned that many of our target buyers are passionate about sports, so we’ve been partnering with some great athletes, like Colin Kaepernick from the San Francisco 49ers. He drove an all‑new F‑TYPE around some of his favorite parts of San Francisco for a terrific series of short vignettes called ‘My Turn, My Town’ that aired on ESPN and are now on YouTube. We also worked with the hugely‑talented comedian and writer Mark Malkoff who drove with one lucky winner around New York City in search of the best pizza places, as part of our #MyTurnToJag social contest.

Why did you decide to partner with USA Network’s Covert Affairs show?
We decided to partner with Covert Affairs because we found out the show not only has an audience that is right there with our target buyer profile, but it also has a very active social media presence. While people are watching the show, they’re also talking on their social networks about it. We hope that by being the show’s exclusive auto partner this season, Jaguar and the F‑TYPE will be part of those conversations.

How is Jaguar using the Shazam app?
Our Shazam partnership is very cool. Shazam is the music identification app with more than 350 million users worldwide. Our partnership with them makes our TV spots interactive. Anyone with the Shazam app on their smart phone who sees an F‑TYPE TV spot can tap one button and instantly arrive at some great content about the car. Anyone who is at the cinema, and during the previews, sees the Shazam logo in our ad, can activate their Shazam smartphone app and learn more about the F‑TYPE; either right then and there or at a later time.

How does your content providing with Smart TVs work?
Our target buyers are early adaptors of tech but still love to watch plenty of TV, even though they may be checking email on their iPads, or reading game reports on their laptop at the same time. Anyone with a Samsung or LG Smart TV, or Direct TV, can click on any F‑TYPE ad using their remote and be taken to a microsite that includes F‑TYPE videos, images and further details of the car.

How can you gauge the success of all this social media and digital activity?
It is always hard to quantify, but all I would say is that Jaguar had a stellar sales month in June ‑ our best June sales performance since 2006. It pushed Jaguar’s year‑to‑date sales up by 20 percent. In the first full month of F‑TYPE availability, we saw an impressive 417 cars delivered to customers. Numbers don’t lie, and with 91 percent of consumers who expressed real interest in the F‑TYPE were new to the brand, we think our digital presence is having a real impact.