Nissan pranks emerge Olympics brand winner 

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A cheeky Olympic campaign seems to have worked for Nissan UK where its car commercials have been a runaway success. Since the Games ended ad-trackers have crunched the data and say Nissan stood out as a brand winner for its marketing campaign.

Nissan’s sponsorship of British athletes was promoted with a series of pranks played during an athlete briefing session before they left for Rio. They were secretly filmed and the videos released under the banner “Do it for us”.

Hidden cameras caught the reactions of athletes as two brand managers (actors) asked them to put a range of silly symbolic actions into their performance, including steering themselves into the starting blocks and installing branded airbags in a boat.

Stephan Shakespeare, CEO and co-founder of research firm YouGov, said many high profile brands associated with the Olympics (like McDonald’s and Visa) struggled to connect with the public over the last month, but “one notable exception” was Nissan.

According to YouGov, the ad awareness metric for Nissan increased by five points over the course of the Games which Shakespeare said indicated that “its multi-channel activity has worked well”.

Nissan was also named as the biggest winner among Team GB sponsors in a separate study conducted by WE Communications, Marketing Week reported.

WE assigned Nissan a total index ranking of 99 points and said the company had achieved 4,025 total mentions in the UK.

Sportswear firm Adidas and Aldi, the German discount supermarket chain, also did well after achieving total index rankings of 88 points and 85 points respectively.

The 90-second Nissan spot was developed at Red Bee. Creative by Hannah Ford and Jim de Zoete and director Olly Parsons.


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