The Auto Trader team set aside budget for a summer 2018 ATL brand campaign to promote their new car offering, However, there was concern that the World Cup would dominate the nation’s attention. They decided to take a braver move and join the melee, rather than compete with it. But with no TV spot and, without being an official sponsor, they had no permission to even mention the World Cup.

Instead, they invested in a disruptive social media campaign that won the hearts and minds of the nation by mirroring England’s success on the pitch.

The specific objectives were:

Boost and broaden the brand’s social following

Auto Trader trending on social media during an England game

Reach 100k entrants to competition

Drive visits to competition homepage Autotrader.co.uk/goals

Drive awareness of Auto Trader’s new car offering

Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best ones. With no idea how far they would end up going in the tournament, Auto Trader promised to give away a brand new car every time England scored during the World Cup. Entry was easy: post the hashtag #AutoTraderGoals on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram after each goal for the chance to win. A simple but effective concept for driving a huge amount of buzz and conversation during the tournament. The campaign rode the wave of the mood of the nation and was reactive to both the community’s conversations and the performance of the team.

The idea had an intentionally broad appeal and accessible entry mechanic designed to grow Auto Trader’s social following beyond car enthusiasts and dealers. No specialist knowledge of football or cars was required: this was a competition everyone could enter, whether a football fanatic or World Cup widow.

The strategy combined forensic tactical planning with a mischievously disruptive new TOV to cut through the noise from official sponsors based on a Tease, Fanfare, Sustain model.

Tease: The cross-channel campaign launched via DOOH, print, paid digital media and paid social. A large audience pool was created two weeks ahead of the tournament in order to retarget them throughout. Four audience groups were identified and initial testing identified which platforms, formats and TOV generated the best engagement and acquisition.

Fanfare: A content partnership with UNILAD and a hugely successful broadcast day with former-England player, John Barnes, drove excitement as the tournament kicked off.

Sustain: An agile strategy was needed to react to an unpredictable outcome. This enabled Auto Trader to respond to opportunities, such as the chance to organise and sponsor a public screening of the Semi-Final in Manchester, allowing the #AutoTraderGoals community to come together physically.

A Like to Remind format with Twitter drove 19,200 reminders, delivered as a notification on users’ phones an hour before the match. The opt-in rate for this was 95% with 95,500 reminders sent throughout the campaign.

For each England match a ‘war room’ was established with staff working an intense six-hour shift across each social channel to engage directly with the audience. Armed with content plans and assets, the team reacted at lightning speed to events on the pitch and reply to individual comments. The planning came into its own during the dramatic 6 goal Panama game.

When Auto Trader gave away six cars during the England-Panama game, the social commentary around its Finance Director‘s ‘misery’ at signing off the campaign was notable. Within hours, the fictional character of Neil, the Finance Director was created and a professionally-shot spoof video featuring him was posted. The nation loved it

#AutoTraderGoals trended in the top ten on Twitter after every goal. In most instances, they were the only brand trending at that time, at one point above #WorldCup. The brand achieved a 21% SOV on Twitter, compared to official sponsor Coca-Cola’s 17%. Twitter requested a case study for their website.

The #AutoTraderGoals hashtag was used over 270,000 times, with over 160,000 individual engagements (excluding hashtag use).

25,000 new followers were gained during the campaign, with a high number of female entrants commenting #AutoTraderGoals was a way for them to engage in the World Cup, despite not liking football.

Over 250,000 sessions were driven to the campaign landing page. 24200 of these visitors went on to search for a new car. The campaign helped boost Auto Trader’s organic search rankings, with ‘New Car’ climbing 25 places to position 2 and the Abarth 595 car rising 25 places.