Honda Amazes on Twitter

The automobile firm launched a Twitter campaign a week before the launch of the Honda Amaze, to ensure buzz for the launch.

Honda Amaze, the first car from the company to have a diesel engine, was launched in India in April 2012. To highlight the launch, the automobile firm initiated a Twitter campaign a week before the launch day on April 4, to ensure a buzz, drive trials and translate into sales.

Conceptualised by GroupM's digital media agency Blazar, the campaign was run on Twitter. The available insights from GroupM's Social Hub showed that Twitter would play a vital role in the plan that was being crafted.

The agency created a hashtag, #HondaDiesel, and the execution of the campaign encompassed conducting a question and answer contest on Twitter and gratifying the winners with 25.8 litres worth of diesel or cash vouchers rounding up to the said value. Honda asked users a set of five questions related to the Honda Amaze. The winners were selected amongst the users who answered the questions correctly and got the most number of retweets.

For the day, the hashtag #HondaDiesel trended nationally on the 3rd position, receiving around 8,467 tweets, 5,169+ retweets and 843 mentions, thus reaching 3.04 million Twitter users.

According to the agency, the core objective was to educate, engage and entertain automobile enthusiasts about the first diesel car from Honda. Since this was Honda's first step into the diesel category, associating the brand (Honda) with its key proposition (Diesel) was the basic idea.

Explaining the brief behind the campaign, Anita Sharma, AVP, marketing communications, Honda SIEL Cars India, tells afaqs! that the campaign was a precursor to the main Honda Amaze launch in India. "There was already a lot of anticipation for the Amaze in the market. Our objective was simple - to further amplify the hype and get the people talking more about the Honda Amaze. Besides, we also wanted to highlight and create awareness about the class leading technology that Honda Amaze delivers," she adds.

According to Sharma, on Twitter, Honda made a big impact as the trends on Twitter helped it to capture the pulse of the nation. "Twitter was responsible for generating a highly powerful traffic to our site and the Indian consumer has quiet appreciated and liked the car," she informs. However, Honda didn't reveal the number of booking and test ride requests generated by this campaign.

The contest was executed only on Twitter; however, the official Honda Facebook Page was used to promote and leverage the Twitter contest. The complete communication of Honda Amaze i-DTEC was promoted in print, electronic and outdoor, too.