It was about as real-time as marketing gets. A mere seven minutes after the royal family's announcement Monday that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are expecting again, Nissan U.K. posted the tweet below.
But it wasn't a matter of lightning-fast creative. It was all planned.
"We spotted the trend for Royal Baby when the last rumors started mid-July and created a piece ready to go at that time," said David Parkinson, head of social for Nissan in Europe. "As it happened, the rumor was never confirmed, so we kept the piece in our back pocket. It was with our media agency, [Manning Gottlieb] OMD, ready to go as soon as it was [confirmed]."
Parkinson adds: "When the rumor was confirmed yesterday we already had everything in place with our agencies and were able to push the creative out very fast."
It could be triplets and there would *still* be enough room for the Queen... #XTrail#SevenSeats#RoyalBabypic.twitter.com/k4HiNAb7lq
— NissanUK (@NissanUK) September 8, 2014The pregnancy rumors earlier this summer were spotted by Nissan and DigitasLBi France's BrandLive initiative, which is basically a control center that scans news and trends for ideas the brand might tie into.
BrandLive started in France but is now pan-European. "Obviously it's much harder pan European," said Parkinson. "We have had a number of pieces, some for Europe—April Fool's, back to school—and others country specific. Some of this content is reactive, which takes two to four hours to be approved and ready to go, and some of it is proactive to things that we 'know' are coming."
The system seems to be working, as Nissan was first out of the gate on the pregnancy news.
"As with all things that look easy, there was in fact a lot of hard work behind the scenes," said Parkinson. "We are very proud of the success we have had with this piece, and of course wish the Duchess a speedy recovery from her current sickness."
CREDITS
Client: Nissan U.K.
DigitasLBi France: Creative Director, Patrick Dacquin
DigitasLBi France: Art Director, Anthony Lepinay
Nissan Europe: Current General Manager of Social & Digital Engagement (future GM - Head of Digital for Nissan in Africa, Middle East & India): David Parkinson
Manning Gottlieb OMD: Media agency