Inspiring Sports Marketing
Seven years after the revolutionary launch of Audi TV comes a new motorsport branded content tie-up between Nissan and Google called Nismo TV.
The alliance between the automaker and the online video platform launched a motor racing YouTube channel on 21 March that also sees the video-sharing service’s brand appear on Nissan’s race cars.
Launched with an online introductory film,
plus traditional and digital PR support, the initiative will curate, aggregate and commission global Nissan motorsport and performance product content 52 weeks per year.
The new channel features behind-the-scenes footage from Nissan’s Motorsport team from technical details and pre-race preparation for series such as Blancpain and LeMans, to its GT Academy activity (which sees PlayStation video-gamers compete to become race car drivers).
The collaboration sees the new Nismo.TV iconography and the YouTube logo will also be displayed prominently on the Nissan GT-R vehicles as the content partnership also aims to increase the exposure of all three brands.
Nismo.TV is the latest element in Nissan’s wider branded content led strategy (which also includes alliances with PlayStation and Gazprom) and which sees the carmaker aim to ‘democratise motorsports. Indeed, further Nissan YouTube channels will be launched later in the year, as well as additional features and live streaming.
‘We want to see how motorsport can help direct brand opinion,’ says Nissan’s director of global motorsport Darren Cox. ‘Through tie-ups with someone like YouTube we aim to make Nissan the most accessible brand in the sport.’
‘Working in the content space with Nissan creates an exciting new dimension to our existing motorsport content offering which is fast becoming a valuable genre,’ says Cox.
‘By launching Nismo.TV on YouTube we’re creating a new template for leveraging motorsport content and taking it beyond the purist, on a truly global level. This new relationship with YouTube, like our collaborations with Gazprom Neft and PlayStation, shows what a new generation of motorsport-led marketing will look like.’
According to Cox, innovation is what Nissan does best.
‘With YouTube we can go out there and break the rules when it comes to engaging with our audience: the current and future motorsport fans.’
YouTube Sport’s strategic development manager Julie Kikla explains that content partnerships such as this help improve YouTube’s library of content and also help promote the site as a media resource.
Comment
The objective for Nismo.Tv is to give fans unparalleled access to motorsport content and the car brand hopes that this fan-focused approach will help attract new consumers to motorsport.
This is a similar aim to that stated by Audi when it launched Audi TV back in 2005.
This brand-owned channel launch was considered to be a genuinely revolutionary concept and generated an avalanche of media coverage and industry buzz.
The Audi Channel was a digital satellite channel launched in the UK by Sky Digital.
The channel aired a range of shows from vehicle user guides, driver tuitions, celebrity interviews, new product launches, dealership profiles, as well as coverage of sporting events sponsored by Audi, including the ‘Science Of Sport’ and German Touring Car Championship.
The world has changed dramatically since Audi launched on satellite TV – and Red Bull’s astonishing Stratos project shows the degree to which branded content has moved towards online channels.
Indeed, this new Nissan and YouTube alliance was announced just one day after YouTube revealed it had racked up one billion unique users a month.
This suggests that half of all the world’s internet users now visit YouTube.
Links
Nismo TV YouTube Intro Film
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jZaZdTOYOfU
Nismo TV Channel YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaTxfj0BzL-MaCy-YUqPRoQ?feature=mhee
Nissan & PlayStation Academy
http://www.nissanusa.com/gt-academy-web.html
Gazprom G-Drive & Nissan Partnership
Nissan Website
