Hyundai x Amazon (2023)
Campaign Art Direction
Situation
Even before COVID disrupted the world of commerce, auto manufacturers (OEMs) were exploring full-funnel direct digital marketing to customers. But COVID accelerated that process. Hyundai, one of Amazon Ads’ most engaged OEMs, asked Brand Innovation Lab’s Automotive team to develop the first full-featured virtual showroom on Amazon, including real-time vehicle inventory lookup/display, which would drive leads directly from Amazon to Hyundai dealerships across the country.
The Insight
There are at least nine different types of online tools available for customers to discover, evaluate, locate and plan for a vehicle purchase, with still others needed for financing estimates, trade-in valuation, and more. In 2019, auto shoppers visited an average of 4.2 sites (spending over 13 hours!) before visiting a dealer, with every one of these sites requiring PII before providing the most valuable component of their service: the price and availability of the vehicle of interest. It’s no wonder that only 4 out of 10 customers were satisfied with the current process.
The challenge
How could we consolidate the shopping process, streamline the UX, and provide customer value in less time, with more anonymity? How could we ensure our inventory data was current and accurate? And, how could we do this as a supplement to OEM brand site traffic, without cannibalizing those visitors? These were just a few of the many challenges this project demanded solutions for.
Solution
My team and I spent over a year developing the framework to enable customers to view the Hyundai vehicle lineup, select a model, trim and color. During the customization process, a novel 360-degree interactive view port allowed customers to see their vehicle update as they made their selections. Meanwhile, in the background, vehicles matching those preferences were located, and displayed in real-time. As customers flip through the customized results, they can easily view details and features of each vehicle—but most importantly, its MSRP. A financial calculator enabled customers to estimate their potential costs, factoring in sales tax, trade-in value, and their selected financing options.
Finally, and only when they chose to, customers could contact dealers directly from Amazon, requesting more information or a test-drive of that exact vehicle.
Hyundai Ioniq 5 Fire TV Vehicle Page
results
Early data supports the Virtual Showroom’s effectiveness at delivering customer engagement throughout the auto shopping journey: Awareness, Consideration and Decision. Our Hyundai clients are pleased, and praised the experience, writing “I’ve heard nothing but compliments since the launch of Evolve.” These early results inform us that we are on the right track, and the program is expanding to become an always-on automotive shopping destination on Amazon.
Driving Quality Traffic
1.4M Visitors in Q1 2023 (Experian)
+84% New Visitors in Q1 2023 vs. Q4 2022 (Experian)
-22% Cost per Visitor with HVAs (Experian)
Showroom HVA engagers over-indexed in vehicle purchaser rate by 9.5x when compared to general campaign viewers
Locate to dealer, plan to dealer, and create locate HVA actions were most effective to convert purchasers
Showroom visitors who have multiple HVAs are more likely to make a vehicle purchase
Audience who were reached by both upper and lower funnel media were 2x more likely to have HVA engagements with Hyundai Evolve Showroom compared to an average campaign viewer
Kantar Research
Overall, the campaign improved Ad Recall, elevated Brand Favorability, Consideration Intent and strengthened agreement with Brand Attributes
Makes it easier to shop for a vehicle with an online showroom on Amazon (+5.0 P)
Simplifies the shopping and vehicle discovery process (+5.8 P)
Allows me to configure and build a vehicle directly within Amazon (+3.4)
Manages steady vehicle inventory in my area (+5.1 r)
Amazon users Age 35+, females and those who will be In-Market in the next 1-2
years were most receptive to the campaign