A universal insight does exist. If you want to tell whether a person is lying or not, you usually ask them to “look me in the eye”, and this was our starting point. We wanted our mechanics to tell the truth looking into our customers’ eyes, but how could we prove that what they are saying is the truth and not just another advertising campaign?

At www.theeyesthatdontlie.com 20 Midas mechanics volunteered to face the best lie detector in the world. To face the challenge, we brought the “EyeDetect” machine, the most advanced lie detection system based on pupil analysis technology and already used by the FBI, all the way from Utah (USA) to Europe for the very first time. This visual polygraph works on the basis that when we tell a lie, subtle changes are produced in the way our eyes behave, perceptible only to the machine.

We built the campaign website: www.theeyesthatdontlie.com, to which we diverted all traffic from the PR actions we organised and social media where the campaign was displayed with a highly developed audio-visual content. There we hosted the promotion for the final consumer to participate in on the website or via social media with the hashtag #theeyesthatdontlie. On the homepage the user could view a summary of the project via an informative video. All the tests the mechanics took, including summaries on video of the tests passed on each of the 6 main benefits of the brand, were also made available to the user. All the reports extracted from the tests were published on the website.

Meanwhile, we organised a press conference along with a strategy for content and influencers on social media, which were the only tools used to communicate the campaign to our target.

After the campaign, customer confidence in Midas grew by 28.6%, 34 points ahead of our competitors. One month later we HONESTLY went from 4th to 1st position as the favourite car repair service, overtaking official dealerships, and we managed to increase sales by 5.1% during the campaign period and in relation to the same period the previous year.

Plus we achieved excellent visibility and recognition results from the action:

• 220K eyes visited the website

• Over 80k viewed the videos

• Over 100 national and international media mentions

• An estimated audience of over 25.6 million

• EARNED MEDIA of 2.25 million Euros

All of this, via a low cost campaign with a total budget of only 81,000€.