Renault Italy launches on the market 100 exclusive examples of CAPTUR Tokyo Edition, a limited edition of the SUV, inspired by the Japanese capital and created in collaboration with Garage Italia.
The innovative way of communication and sales conceived by Publicis Italia will distinguish the special edition. CAPTUR Tokyo Edition, in fact, will be launched with "Tokyo Stories": an Instagram stories in manga style through which it will be possible to dialogue, via Facebook Messenger, with a character's chatbot and directly pre-order the car.
An entirely new experience for users, on the border between fiction and reality.
In "Tokyo Stories" the events of two guys intersect with those of a mysterious character and a car outside the box, in a magical and nocturnal Tokyo. Made from the pencil of Matteo De Longis, the manga will be released online through the Instagram Stories of Renault Italy.
Give us an overview of the campaign, what is it about?
Renault Captur worked on a Extra-limited Edition of only 100 pieces tailored made by Garage Italia created by Lapo Elkann. This very special edition is inspired by Tokyo and like the city itself, is a mix of tradition and great innovation.
Thus to translate this concept in communication we chose to create an usual Instagram stories using the traditional language of manga and because we wanted also to interpret the innovative latter of Tokyo we worked with Facebook to propose a never-done before way of selling it, allowing users to connect with a mysterious protagonist in a seamless navigation.
Tell us about the creative brief, what did it ask?
Captur Tokyo is a combination of modernity/technology (the car itself) and tradition (the customized personalization). We needed to find a way to let people experience these two opposites, apparently incompatible.
Which insight led to the creation of this piece of work?
Since the challenge was to sell the car in way that was never done before, we started from the media channel and built the project around it; that how we get to the point that we needed to work on a digital engagement that speaks to users through the best know language of the Japanese culture.
How did the client initially react to this idea?
They simply loved it, it has been approved without second thoughts.
What was the greatest challenge that you and your team faced during development.
There were many challenges, as usual when you do something for the first time. On the technical side, we needed to integrate different plattforms such as Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Renault Servers and finally Paypal for the transaction. In order to do that, we collaborated with our partners as one team since the beginning, and it worked out great. On the content side, we found out how meticulous the development of a manga could be: every board is a single piece of art and also a part of a great story.
What did you enjoy most about seeing this campaign through? Did you learn anything new from the experience?
In this project we developed for the first time a storytelling that drives users throughout all the customer experience, including the deal. It was exciting for us as well for the client. To achieve this result, we had to match creative needs with UX issues and we learned a lot doing that. And it’s not over, as we still are collecting a lot of feedbacks that will help us to design the next experiences.
Where do you see this campaign going in the future?
We wanted to concentrate discussion on social media in order to intercept new audiences that are less keen to go and visit a showroom. But of course, if selling through chatbot reveals itself effective, why not extend the operation and create a profile for all Renault dealers? We’ve been accelerating the process to create real time marketing to answer consumer needs, for Renault it’s definitely part of a more global digital strategy.