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.theeyesdontlie.com we challenged 20 Midas mechanics to volunteer to look the best lie detector in the world “in the eye”. In order to achieve this, 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.

The campaign started out from the basis of data we wanted to change: 6 out of 10 people think car mechanics lie. This is a universal belief that fails to do justice to the reality of Midas, whose commitment to transparency and protocols deserve to be conveyed and publicised in order to restore consumers’ trust.

More than 100 Midas mechanics offered themselves as volunteers to prove it. In the end 20 mechanics took the test, which comprised more than 300 questions. Each test, lasting approximately 40 minutes, involved monitoring subtle changes in the eyes: pupil diameter, blink rate and the movement of the eyes, among others. The results? All the Midas mechanics were telling the truth and their results can be seen at www.losojosquenomienten.com

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€.

According to a survey carried out by OCU (a Spanish consumer organisation), 6 out of 10 people believe that car mechanics lie. This lack of trust had an impact on Midas, but we wanted to show that our mechanics DO NOT LIE. How? By using the world’s most advanced lie detection technology, which scientifically proves it by means of the reflexes and involuntary movements recorded in the eyes. The Midas mechanics’ hashtag #LosOjosQuenoMienten (“The Eyes that don’t Lie”) proved it, and we managed to climb from fourth favourite brand to first, even overtaking official dealerships.

Trust is an abstract phenomenon that cannot be restored or earned by words alone. Simply claiming that our mechanics at Midas told the truth was not enough, and positioning the brand in an area of trust within such a widely reviled industry merited being done in the most credible way in the world. From among all the ways of demonstrating this trust we chose the most trustworthy and most innovative: Eyedetect, a technology that uses all the information gathered from eye movements to produce a scientific measurement of the degree of trustworthiness exhibited by the person under scrutiny. Its reliability level is 98%. Because the eyes don’t lie.

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.