If you are also responsible for a terrific automotive campaign enter it into the Automotive category at The Masters of Marketing awards, brought to you by Econsultancy and Marketing Week.

This is a major stage for sharing and promoting true mastery and excellence in the marketing industry which can lead to a year-round programme of reputation building publicity and press coverage for your business, your work and your team.

To inspire your own entry, check out these five examples of automotive content from the last couple of years.

VW Polo

In 2014, Volkswagen developed a sequentially-targeted video campaign comprising a version of the TV creative and five brand new product feature videos.

This was meant to challenge the public perception that Polos aren’t the sturdiest of cars.

Viewers who watched the entire length of the TV spot were retargeted with product videos, while the second phase of the campaign drove people to the manufacturer’s website.

With 678,746 views of the TV creative, the target of 540,000 was exceeded by 26%.

McLaren

In 2012, McLaren launched a new £200,000 luxury sports car, but moved away from a traditional automotive marketing approach to focus on digital channels.

McLaren’s strategy involved an ‘always-on’ digital programme for fans and prospects, building the McLaren story through content.

This included a new personalisation tool, built using augmented reality to create CGi models allowing customers to select millions of different car option combinations through to order.

And the following video, called the P1 Light Film, a world first view of animated wind tunnel test data.

McLaren increased its sales more than eight times the 2011 volume, increasing market share from 1% to 12%

Website visits also increased by 72% (2012 v 2011) with 330,000 visitors using the configurator tool.

Subaru

Subaru wanted to produce an interactive campaign for its Subaru Forester that would be entertaining for various international markets outside of Japan.

The result was ‘The Big Night’, a massively complex interactive film that featured 174 individual film segments to navigate, leading to 98,304 potential variations of the film and 40 different endings.

Even though the film is approximately nine minutes long when played until the end, the average visitor stay on the video was 13.4 minutes, and overall user engagement was around 80%. This resulted in an average retention time of about 150%.

Sales of the Subaru Forester saw a 20% increase in overseas markets.

Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes-Benz launched the new C-Class model range in 2014, and needed a way to engage consumers and change their perceptions that the previous model had become ‘dated’.

It did this by designing an interactive iPad app featuring 3D interactive tours, motion control, car configurator and x-ray features.

The average time spent per use was an impressive 37 minutes, with an 80% return rate and an average eight pages viewed per visit.

More importantly, the test drive conversion rate compared to the website was 78% and the retailer locator conversion rate compared to website was 87%.

Jaguar

Jaguar and We Are Social developed a campaign designed to capture the imagination and pride within Britain and hopefully establish the F-TYPE as a new British icon.

This lofty aim resulted in Your Turn Britain, a campaign that kicked off with eight introductory films made in collaboration with British icons from the worlds of film, music, design and sport.

Videos were seeded across all Jaguar UK social channels (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube) with the call to action of entering a driving experience weekend giveaway.

Thanks to a blogger and influencer outreach strategy that further pushed the campaign beyond Jaguar’s audience, the Your Turn Britain Facebook app had 30,000 visits, and 4,491 photos were shared.

The hashtag #YourTurnBritain was used 6,113 times on Twitter. The Tumblr hub had 2.5m views, 7,500 notes and 2,000 new followers, while the ambassador films were viewed 300,000 times.

Overall, the campaign reached a huge 34m people.

You can learn even more about content marketing at our two day Festival of Marketing event in November. Book your ticket today and see how you can break through the noise.