Branded Entertainment is a growing and key part of the marketing mix for brands in the US, and is an important way to reach consumers. In our country it can often be expensive and limiting if you are looking to do this with a large media partner. There is greater opportunity in the social media landscape where branded content is evolving not only to have consumers see the content, but to have them participate with brands in the conversation. In order to break through the clutter it often requires heavy amounts of paid media to achieve reach, and it’s even more difficult to get participation. User generated content and incorporating the ideas of the people gives more impact and investment to the content and more benefit for the brand.

Más que un Auto was launched and promoted on Twitter during #nameyourcarday. During the first phase, social efforts focused on awareness for the program. A hyper-targeted publishing strategy delivered message to Toyota owners, fans, and friends of fans via paid, organic as well as influencers through FB and TW platforms.

Community management honed in on one on one engagement to encourage participation and sharing of personal stories. Additional incentives to encourage engagement included photo of the week, surprise and delight gift cards, and contest designed to communicate personal connection between car and owner.

The clearest evidence of our success is the sheer number of requests we received: 100,000 in the span of six months. This significantly outpaced our projections. Direct mail efforts proved to be integral in driving Toyota owners traffic to www.masqueunauto.com. The effort produced open rates of 31%. This was 1.4x above the established benchmark and well above the target goal of 21.9%.