Land Rover

Land Rover on Instagram is API Genius.

Woodstone

It’s pretty amazing how brands are beginning to take advantage of the Instagram API to create compelling advertising. Landrover has launched 2 Instagram campaigns that take full advantage of the smartphone applications ability to use video and seamless image blends to create a story built around the new Landcover discovery. Developed by Y&R New York, followers engage in two fictional stories. The first follows the adventures of two brothers in Kanab Utah. The second a young couple in Sawtooth National Forest Idaho. The campaign blends amazing landscape photography that has been stitched together to create a seamless, scrollable backdrop, and short video clips from each adventure. Both stories are viewable at @SolitudeInSawtooth, @BrotherhoodOfWonderstone on Instagram. At various points users can tap on specific images to learn skills in off-road driving, survival tips, and other outdoor techniques. This is such a great form of social advertising. It is engaging, without being a hard sell. It elevates the brand in a way that makes the Landcover Discovery even more desirable, and it engages with the target audience on a very transparent level. You really should look at this on your Instagram account if you can. The website version simply doesn’t do it justice. The video below from Digital Buzz shows it in action if you don’t want to, or have the time to check it out on your Instagram account.

 

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A Land Rover Valentine.

Over the last decade as online video has become more available and ubiquitous, brands have begun to turn to long form video advertising in the form of storytelling. A great example of this is a video produced by Land Rover that tells the story of a 1957 Series 1, bought by 4 friends in college that fell into disrepair. The friends were forced to sell the car, and Land Rover stepped in to help.

 

I love this on so many levels. The production quality of the video is as good as it gets. The story is compelling and draws you in. It doesn’t fell like an ad per say, because Land Rover isn’t trying to sell you something. It demonstrates brand loyalty. It hooks you in and gets you to watch the entire 3 minute video because you really want to see the pay off when the friends are reunited with their beloved Land Rover.

Land Rover has built a small single page microsite that gives even more back story on the car and restoration. On the page, the only ad hooks are the in the header and right menu system with ties to the current vehicles, find a dealer,  sign up for the newsletter etc. It’s a subtle display of effective integrated advertising and storytelling hat uses YouTube to spread the word. The video went up on Valentine’s Day. In less than 3 days it has had almost 300,000 views. Not bad at all.

Heads Up for Land Rover’s Discovery Vision Concept.

As automobiles and technology become even more fused together than they already are, engineers, and designers are coming up with some really impressive automotive features. At the upcoming New York Auto Show LandRover will be introducing its new Discovery Vision Concept. Taking advantage of heads-up display technology and augmented reality features, the Discovery Vision Concept allows the driver to see through the hood of the car exposing the terrain and objects that would normally be blocked from view. The video below shows the system in use, and demonstrates one of the better heads-up uses I have seen to date. One thing that I really like in the video is the way the image of the ground simply fades away as the vehicle levels out and it is no longer needed.

“Sensory Overdrive”. Land Rover’s Interactive Print Campaign.

This might seem a bit gimmicky but the results are pretty impressive. Y&R NYC created an interactive print campaign with social hooks for the new Land Rover Sport. Using Blippar’s Augmented Reality technology, readers of the ad were encouraged to use their smartphones to unlock additional interactive content. This gave readers an opportunity to experience the car in a tangible-digital way, activated from the large scale print campaign. The campaign became one of Blippars top five campaigns of all time and generated over 66,000 interactions in the first week of deployment.

The video below highlights what the interactive ad actually did and is worth a quick view. This is another great example of how print, and mobile are merging, and how publishing is embracing technology to continue to make the medium viable. I have a feeling we are going to see more and more of this kind of thing in the future. I guarantee as it becomes more ubiquitous, the number of interactions will continue to grow.