To say the Patrol is an important model for Nissan is an understatement. Very simply, Nissan Middle East lives and dies by this legendary model. In 2019, Nissan launched the 6th generation Patrol. This marked the first significant change to the model since 2013. It was the first time in a long time there was any new news to talk about when it came to Patrol.

The Nissan Patrol has always been known for its dune bashing heritage, however the new 2020 Nissan Patrol was a serious upgrade. Not only did it maintain it’s rough and rugged heritage, but it added a newly designed luxury interior, advanced infotainment features, and intelligent safety features.

We needed to highlight this duality of the new Patrol in the most engaging way possible.

The new 2020 Nissan Patrol is the most luxurious and technologically advanced Patrol ever. It wasn’t only a desert car anymore, but equally a refined city car. The launch of the 2020 Patrol needed to highlight the duality of the new Patrol, protecting its desert heritage while highlighting its refined luxury. This led us to our big creative idea, ‘Conquer Everywhere’ in the sense that drivers can equally conquer the desert, as well as the city.

Adventurous, high-intensity, rugged desert driving and luxurious city driving are perceived as two opposites. We decided to show these ‘seemingly opposing’ sides of the Patrol as two parallel universes that the users could seamlessly switch between.

According to the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) the gulf region has one of the highest mobile phone penetration rates in the world. In addition, secondary research pointed out that amongst our core target audience of 26 – 40 local Arabs in the GCC countries have one of the highest average times spent on mobile devices, around 6 hours per day! (Source: YouGov)

Our strategy was to ‘conquer’ the mobile phone to present the duality of the Patrol in an engaging manner.

Mobile phones today are loaded with intuitive technologies that allows the user to have a truly interactive experience. We keep rotating our phones to see media hundreds of times and this simple realization led us to our idea of the first ever “flippable” car ad. A fun, engaging, and distinctive way to show how the new Nissan Patrol seamlessly flips between the desert and city worlds.

To bring the idea to life we shot two identical videos, one showing the desert prowess & the other showing urban luxury, using the exact same camera angles & movements. Leveraging the mobile phones gyroscope, you could flip your phone any point in time to see the Patrol conquering the city or conquering the desert.

The first ever Flippable car ad was launched on mobile website interstitial formats and in-app advertisements, targeted to the adventure & prestige / luxury seeker audience psychographic segments.

With the ‘flippable’ video our aim was to drive awareness of the Patrols duality in a highly distinctive, engaging and entertaining way. The results proved that not only did it succeed in achieving objectives but it also proved to be highly engaging for the audience:

• Click Through Rate – 214% higher than category benchmarks

• Completion rate – 190% higher than average benchmarks

• On an average, users flipped 18 times during the 30 seconds ad!

(Source: Media Agency data)