Digital Branding

Nissan has drummed up a full fledge PR campaign around the launch of its new all electric car: the Leaf. This is part of the new strategy of the company aimed at being the first automaker to mass produce electric cars. The website that has been developed for the launch of this new car is an interesting case of integration of Twitter and the so-called “real-time web”.

Since the main obstacle to customer adoption of these cars is the lack of reliability and battery life, the site’s purpose is to inform customers about these details.

A Twitter post field is preeminently displayed right from the home page so as to incite users to participate. Potential customers have the possibility to ask questions to a Nissan expert about any subject regarding the Leaf. Questions and answers are displayed on the website real-time.

There’s even a pie chart displaying the proportion of questions regarding the following topics: Charging, Environment, Features, General, Performance and Technology.

This approach has the advantage of positioning the brand as innovative and technology friendly. This is particularly appealing to the crowd eager to buy such cars: geeks and tech savvy hip Californians. The now ubiquitous integration of social media tools also helps to create a real buzz around the website.

As the user browses the website thanks to the left-side menu there is a possibility to discover a nicely integrated photo gallery, a few technical explications and a video summarizing the “Zero Emission” vision of Nissan all the while monitoring the Twitter thread at the bottom of the page. The user experience is really smooth and that is the kind of integration of real-time web apps such as Friendfeed that we should see more and more in the future.

Nicolas Jambin

http://www.nissanusa.com/leaf-electric-car

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