We know that the test drive is the last and most crucial step to triggering sales in the automotive category – so much so that ‘Test Drives’ is the main KPI of our communication strategies.

But in Turkey, the key barrier to taking a test drive is lack of time. With the constraints of modern life and people working longer hours, fewer people are able to spare enough time for the experience. With an increasing number of people not booking, or not turning up to their appointments, we needed to find a way to increase the number of test drives taken while at the same time building brand visibility and equity as well as driving differentiation from competitors.

According to OECD, 43.3% of employees working more than 50 hours per week on average in Turkey. Unfortunately, Turkey is on the first rank.

Imagine you’re in-market for a Megane Sedan, and you’d like to take a test drive. But between work and other responsibilities, your free time is limited. People prefer to watch a test drive video, instead of testing it physically. Even though we observe that there is an average of 1m views for a test drive video on YouTube, it is inadequate to have the test drive experience in real life. So how could we make taking a real test drive as easy as watching a video of one?

Our idea was deliver instant test drives.

We thought: what if you could get test drives delivered to your door as quickly as some groceries? So we partnered with Getir, an on-demand mobile delivery application

The main target audience is mostly white-collar office workers. Digging the data we found that they needed to wait and an average of 4.5 days to get a test drive confirmed and consequently had to adjust their very tight schedules. This was resulting in a 38% loss in all Megane Sedan test drive applications in 2017.

The audience would then find Renault Test Drive integrated into Getir’s categories. Potential buyers simply clicked on the Megane Sedan category in the Getir mobile app which has the white-collar audience weight as 41% and a test drive was delivered to their door, at any time, to anywhere in Istanbul, in just 10 minutes.

All the user needed to do was to tab on to the Megane Sedan category on Getir mobile application and experience the actual test drive.

30 cars and drivers have been allocated within Istanbul’s major locations. In order to maximize the performance, location of the cars has been changed in real-time if there is low number of test-drive application in certain points.

In order to monitor the progress in real-time, we have started our partnership with a 3 day teaser period and a launch period. In teaser period, we had no media investments. In the day of launch, real-time content follow-up was held in order to make necessary optimizations on social media, search strategy and test drives. After the launch, automobile influencers also experienced real-time test drives in order to increase buzz and this was shared through social media to enhance the reach of the campaign.

The soft launch of the partnership took place on May 19th, and consumers loved the Instant Megane Sedan test drive activation.

By the 3rd day of the soft launch, we had realized 100 test drives by real consumers—with no media investment.

In a 30 day period, 519 test drives were delivered with 74% positive comments.

By having a 100% test drive ratio along with this project, we drove business KPIs 10 times higher than average of test drives in dealers in Istanbul through our groundbreaking idea.

After this partnership, ‘Renault is a technologically advanced car’ perception has increased from 27% to 30%. Familiarity scores increased from 38% to 43% according to the consumer research analysis.

And we redefined the test drive process with our ‘Rennovative’ strategic approach.