Mitsubishi harnesses the buzz around the lunar eclipse for new Eclipse Cross ads via Assignment

Timing a new product launch with the recent lunar eclipse produced impressive results for Mitsubishi New Zealand. A locally-produced campaign via Assignment Group helped Eclipse Cross exceed sales targets in the most competitive automotive sector.

There’s no segment as well catered to as the SUV market. A brief scan of any car dealer’s forecourt will tell you that. The trick is to make new models stand out and locally relevant, says Mitsubishi marketing manager Reece Congdon. So, when Mitsubishi launched the all-new Eclipse Cross, a mid-sized SUV, at the start of the year, the opportunity to harness the buzz around a lunar eclipse in New Zealand skies was simply too good to pass up.

On the day of the eclipse, 2 consecutive full-page press ads in the NZ Herald encouraged readers to see the lunar eclipse that night, and test drive an Eclipse Cross that day. This not only captured the public imagination but drove the highest volume of traffic to the Mitsubishi website the brand had ever seen.

For engagement on social media, Mitsubishi also offered the chance to win a stay at Luna Estate, Martinborough, courtesy of Eclipse Cross. This initiative gained the highest number of entries and shares on Mitsubishi’s Facebook page.

This rather opportune event tied in with Mitsubishi’s ongoing strategy of producing campaigns locally, to meet the unique needs of New Zealand audiences. This approach has helped achieve 8 years of uninterrupted growth, making Mitsubishi the number 3 car brand in New Zealand in December and a no less respectable number 5 for the rest of last year.

It’s early days for Eclipse Cross, having only launched on January 1st, 2018. But once again the home-grown strategy is already paying off, exceeding our ambitious targets by 35%. A tease campaign generated 161 sales, many of them as pre-orders. A targeted direct mail piece encouraging test drives got an 8% response rate. For DM, this is a good result. For DM that asks people to get off the couch for a test drive, it’s a great outcome. This early activity upped the inbound enquiry by 180%, based on any other new vehicle we’d previously released.

The mainstream media seamlessly continued the campaign and kept the key messages, the vehicle and eclipse motif front and centre across print, social media, video and numerous online placements. Mitsubishi also tested the waters with a 3600 image of the vehicle’s interior on Facebook, which generated numbers we’d never seen before, like a 340% increase in leads, and proved an engaging way to promote the vehicle’s features that were prominent in the rest of the campaign.

With an All-Wheel Drive model arriving soon, customers will see a continuation of the same effective campaign. Mitsubishi are hoping for more of the same success.