NISSAN

The Event

Nissan’s founding principle is “Dare to be Different” and our brief, to launch their 22-23 Concept Car in a completely unique way, certainly honoured that desire. They also wanted to celebrate the joint anniversaries of 2 major UK operations; 20 years of the Nissan Design Europe centre in Paddington, and 35 years of the Nissan Technical Centre Europe in Buckinghamshire.

The plan was to invite over 100 journalists and content creators from across the UK and Europe to experience a 2 day, 2 centre, sought after ‘behind the scenes’ experience at these highly secure facilities. Here they would meet the experts and learn what it takes to conceive, design and build new vehicles as well as the exciting technological advances that are being fast tracked into development.

Client Testimonials

I still can’t quite believe what we collectively pulled off there! The amount of moving parts there were, the challenges, the changes, everything! Thank you for everything. This whole thing would not have happened without you.

Sam Mercer
Account Director, Performance Comms

There was a supporting cast of many, but the stars were you guys. I really appreciate your never-ending assistance, make-it-happen attitude, everything. From what we started to what we finished with, I hope you’re both as proud as I am.

Sam Mercer
Account Director, Performance Comms

The Challenges

This is going to be long, sorry!

The Global CEO was so impressed with the plans; that he chose to lead the event so diaries and schedules were constantly on the move – with the final date agreed just 8 weeks prior to launch. This included the annual European summer shutdown which further squeezed the already tight timescales.

Both NDE and NTCE are phenomenal facilities; but neither is an event space. In fact, NDE in particular was a working manufacturing space which usually housed around 40 designers and was, in no way built to host over 100 visiting media, government ministers and internal and external VIPs.

And how do you conceal and then reveal a car; in a public space in central London without using the traditional silk removal?

We had no way of knowing what the public would do – would they interact with the barge? Would we be dealing with a social media flash mob? Protestors? Plus we had 3 different landowners and licensing authorities for the event location.

The model of the concept was only signed off on Friday evening. It then spent all weekend in the studio to provide content for the reveal presentation and so only arrived in London at 6am on the day of the event.

We had no second chances; we had to do something that had never been done before and it had to be perfect first time with precision timing.

The Solutions

Communication – and using the phone – was a key part of the success of this project – we were speaking constantly; keeping inboxes free for important updates / summaries rather than building a never ending to do list. Our turn around times were, phenomenal, even if we do say so ourselves so everything kept moving at the pace it needed to.

Recognising and involving every part of the vital supply chain on every detail helped massively. Every role was so specialist, we pro-actively checked every change with every part of the machine to find out the impacts then relay them back into the chain.

“YES!” was also key; we had to assume that everything could and would be done which set the right attitude and no time was wasted worrying or wondering – we just got on with the job in hand! Agile isn’t enough to describe our approach – we were changing direction before we’d even heard the end of the question or answer.

Our extraordinary suppliers were the real bedrock though. Our AV partners matched us in terms of positivity and could answer ‘yes’ to “Has anyone build a set on a barge before”!! The catering team redesigned menus quicker than you could say ‘high end bowl food’ and we negotiated a lot of flexibility into final numbers.

We could scale our delivery team instantly as the brief grew. We took on more and more responsibility to allow PR Comms to focus on their own expanding remit both in event profile and client expectations. Our ‘behind the scenes’ machine meant they could stay dedicated to their client, the message and the VIPs.

Our ‘just in case’ van also proved very handy and we used about 80% of the spare flats, weights, braces, set, cable and stage. Agile to the very end!

In summary, an excellent team worked their absolute socks off throughout; leaving no stone left unturned and ensuring a smooth, nay, exhilarating onsite experience.

Results

Major impact in the media for our client
Headlines across the “News” in National newspapers
Top tier Automotive media headlines
Online ‘breaking news’ as the announcement was made
Significant social coverage
Quality, long read articles in Business sections of National news including BBC

Non-disclosure agreements mean we can’t share the specifics but; suffice to say, the event far exceeded the client’s initial objectives for high quality coverage articles and overall online views, social shares and online readership impact.