Why:

At nearly a hundred years old, Dew Cadillac and Hummer's automobiles needed a jumpstart into the modern day.

In 2007, Dimmitt and Dew approached Red Frog with a need to target the male market on a corporately lacking Hummer Brand Following the success of the Hummer campaign, Red Frog was asked to apply a similar nontraditional twist to the 2010 SRX.

Hummer was an easy sale from the floor- but it was readily available through other dealers in market and lacking competitive sales incentives.

Cadillac was a competitive sale with many in class rivals, but it offered enormous sales incentives. The challenge was convincing a buyer this was the car for them. Switching gears in this campaign to high-income women! Not men.

How - The Hummer:

We knew the buyer for the H3 was (is) predominately male ages 28 – 45 with an individual income of $45,000 - $75,000. Their market was young, eager with a discretionary income and had a pentient for self attention (ahem a bit of an ego). Younger demographics of males were tech hungry consumers migrating towards online social networking sites, blogs, and were going mobile via their BlackBerry or iPhone. Dimmitt and Dew needed to be the leader in the local Tampa Bay automobile market in the social media platform. They needed to get some social media face time!

Red Frog developed the website www.MeandMyHummer.com to be the center of communication for all advertising and experiential events.

We took it to the streets with fully graphic wrapped Hummers touting "street team" and brand ambassadors loaded with the ammunition of education of the Hummer Brand. Just short of bringing in Hannibal, BA and the rest of the "A" Team, our caravans of Hummers were hard to miss. Spotting other power hungry Hummers driving down the road we would "pull them over" and record "flip" enabled videos of consumers sharing their Hummer driving experiences. The consumer would authorize the video upload and supply us with their contact information. We would send them a link to the uploaded version- which was forwarded to an average of 8 friends 85% of the time.

Red Frog took existing highway billboard inventory held by the dealers and altered from their more traditional "here is the car here is the price" creative to instead drive traffic to the Me and My Hummer website. Using these billboards (and website) Red Frog hosted the "Face of Dew" and "Face of Dimmitt" contest, played by submitting a story about your Hummer experience. Data on visitors was captured at the point of login and after stories were collected, visitors could hang around and chat with others, learn more about new products, after market options, trends, trips for adventure enthusiast, or directly port to Facebook, Myspace, You Tube and a dealer hosted blog. Red Frog could measure links and click thru rates to effectively gauge the popularity of the different sites within the defined target markets.

The integrated blog was used to build awareness of the dealership and their many Hummer off-road events, promotions, dealer and corporate news and interesting topics in the automotive industry. A blog put Dew front and center among their existing and prospective customers, positioning them as an authority among their peers and competition in the Tampa Bay area. The blog also integrated valuable analytics that tracked the visitors' information measuring against the determined target markets.

Not much to do when standing at the urinal right? Wrong. We even turned print interactive with a text messaging call to actions placed in mens bathrooms (eye level) and speaking to that particular market demographic's location. "Lost Your Balls" ran at golf courses "Bulls Eye" was placed at the USF Bulls Sundome and "Yo Ho! Yo Ho!" was placed in marinas.

Results Hummer:

Talk about putting a fork in it. We got it done! Traffic to the website of www.MeandMyHummer.com skyrocketed to 8,000 unique visitors within two weeks of launching. Over 300 detailed and engaging personal Bay Area stories were collected from Hummer affecionados . A brand experience for the H3 was defined only at Dew Hummer as loyal customers became friends of Dew on Facebook with approximately 1000 avid fans by day 30.

The street team videos were uploaded to the site and blasted out to an existing data base of fans. 85% of the time the Fan him/herself went to the site to check out their own video and (on average) forwarded to 8 friends exponentially building our data base of followers with every click. Text messaging to the existing database increased service department appointments by 20% over 6 months.

Holding to our measurement promise for Hummer in ROI, Red Frog replaced 75% of the dealerships existing traditional marketing and advertising budget with Non Traditional, Experiential, and New Social Marketing. The remaining 25% held in traditional advertising included Out of Home and Radio however, 100% of call-to- action elements led back to new technologies.

How Cadillac:

The second half of 2009 brought with it the all new Cadillac SRX. The vehicle was undoubtedly a competitive force on its own… but the challenge was to go beyond getting the word out. We needed to get people to drive the cars and tell others to do the same.

The target market for the SRX is predominately women- 30 to 55, with social demographics ranging from stay at home moms to corporate executives.

Following in the footsteps of the Hummer campaign, we launched www.meandmycadillac.com and set up a Facebook and Twitter presence for the dealerships to promote the vehicle specifically to this target market. Then we got to work finding our endorsements.

The closest way from point A to B is a straight line. We had a limited amount of time to get out a very big message, so we went directly to the source. Professional women of influence. we leveraged a sponsorship with the Tampa Bay Business Journal's Business Woman of the Year awards. This elite event sells over 400 tickets annually and caters to the who's who in the Tampa Bay professional market. By sponsoring the event, we were able to stage an up front and personal introduction of the vehicle to this market and presented each category winner with the exclusive "award" of a one week test drive.

For the "hot moms" of the market, we went straight to the PTA and thanked dedicated board members and active mommy volunteers by giving them the same "award".

With our new found (and free) brand ambassadors ready to pick up their prizes, we designed and posted rear window decals denoting www.meandmycadillac.com along with "Business Woman of the Year" or "PTA Board Member of the Year". As lucky recipients arrived, Red Frog shot videos of them claiming their prizes giving us personal promotional tools to issue Facebook posts and HTML email blasts. These messages went to databases of other Tampa Bay women within similar influence demographics.

As winners drove their vehicles they posted their daily experiences to Facebook including video diaries - building followers and friends along the way.

Thanks to this newly built following in social channels, we had enough of an established presence to validate launching a 30 day radio campaign driving traffic to the built site of experiences and endorsements. Adding to the endorsement value were favorite disc jockeys who shot videos of their drives, and posted to Me and My Cadillac.com which acted as a portal thru the main radio station website. DJ's spoke daily on their morning shows about their vehicle, what they were loving about it and, where they were going with it that day.

To keep the street presence strong, The SRX experience campaign included strategic event staging's. Brand ambassadors were on site to capture photographs with prospects, collect their data and load images to social portals. Prospects were sent follow up notes and links to view their photos which launched the Facebook portal and encouraged them to forward these photos to a friend or post on their own Facebook pages.

Results Cadillac:

The www.meandmycadillac.com website received over 7500 unique impressions within 120 days, captured approximately 1200 unique leads and inquiries, and most importantly was linked back as the direct lead to close source for the sale or advance reservation of 124 brand new SRX vehicles within the first 145 days from campaign launch.

"It's obvious that your passion as a leader inspires those around you. Thanks to you and your team for these successful campaigns as a result of the passion for our brand."
Scott Larguier-
Dew Cadillac and Hummer, St. Pete