The launch of the 2013 Subaru Impreza came with a unique set of problems, foremost of which was low awareness. While people who are familiar with Subaru vehicles are known to love their cars, we had to convince new people that they too can love a car. To do so, we evoked the memories and nostalgia for the 1 car everyone loved: their first car. So we created firstcarstory.com, a special site where you could write your first car story, have it animated in real time by a unique animation generator, add your voice, tag friends, and share it through social networks. An innovative story map showed users where their stories intersected with their friends’ stories, and the general public’s stories at large, creating a universal database of people’s first car stories.

To get the word out, we created animated television spots generated by the site’s own animation generator using real user-submitted first car stories. Viewers at home were invited to animate their own first car stories, and share them via social networks. Bloggers and celebrities entered their own stories and posted the animated version on their sites. Rich banners let people rebuild their first cars, and gave users an easy segue into telling and sharing a story of their own, while Pandora and Spotify allowed people to recreate their own first car radio station.

The reaction to the campaign has far exceeded expectations.

25,000+ submissions.1m+ visits.Conversion rate to tell a story is 1.5% .Average site engagement 4.5 minutes, watching at least 2 complete stories.2/3 of all stories get shared. 73% of videos get watched completely. And awareness of the Subaru Impreza is higher than ever. March alone saw an increase of 209% over the previous year, and the Subaru Impreza has become the second top selling Subaru in the brand stable.