A universal insight does exist. When 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 we challenged 20 Midas mechanics to volunteer to look the best lie detector in the world “in the eye”. 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 created 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. 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€.

EYEDETECT, the best lie detector in the world, has proved that our mechanics tell the truth about Midas’ products and services. Our customers got the chance to test it themselves at www.theeyesthatdontlie.com and in Midas garages where the machine was installed. As a direct response, users could prove a truth by challenging the machine themselves on the website or social media. We received tweets with truths to prove and many visits from customers who wanted to take the challenge.

And proving the truth, we climbed from 4th to 1st position as the favourite car maintenance service, overtaking official dealerships.

At Midas, transparency and honesty have always formed part of our DNA; but how can we prove to customers that our mechanics are telling the truth? We found a solution to this challenge and we beat it in a way no other brand has done before.

We decided to focus on facing our main problem – credibility; rather than turning a blind eye.

Not just our product or our brand’s credibility, but the group of professionals who were most clearly becoming a target of mistrust: mechanics.

During the campaign, we subjected a wide range of Midas mechanics from all over Spain to a lie detector test. The aim was to scientifically prove that the truths that have formed the brand’s core from its outset: innovation, quality and above all trust in the maintenance services we offer customers, are an unbiased and reliable reality at all our garages.

According to a survey by the OCU (Spanish Consumer Organisation Group), 6 out of 10 people think that mechanics tell lies. A belief worsened by the recession, which has increased the general public’s mistrust of auto repair garages.

This creates a problem for Midas, an independent chain specialising in vehicle repair, as it casts doubt upon the reliability of their maintenance services and leads drivers to prefer official dealerships that inspire more trust, or make their choice solely on the basis of price, due to a lack of differentiation from our competitors.