LAND ROVER

Lead Agency

MEC MENA

MY LAND

The Challenge

Meet Ahmed.
Ahmed was born in the UAE.
Ahmed loves to cruise down JBR with his friends, but doesn’t drive a Land Rover.
He thinks only people named Mary and Jen drive their kids to soccer games in Land Rovers.
Show your Emirati pride like Ahmed and don’t drive a Land Rover.

OK, this wasn’t an actual meme on Facebook, but it could have been.
Through Digifaces research, we realized that Land Rover lagged well behind competition in brand preference.

The bottom line is Land Rover was not connecting with local Arab consumers, despite the fact that it had a deep history in the region. In the 1990’s, it was one of the favourite Emirati cars. Since then, Land Rover, has become distant and was view as a vehicle for Western women. Our challenge was to reconnect with local Arabs to show them that Land Rovers were still the cars for them.

The Strategy

Despite the tendency to adopt Western trends and technology, local Arabs do not want a Western car.

Arabs are passionate about their cars and have a relationship with them more like people rather than technology. When it comes to people and cars, Arabs have a deeper connection with those that share their heritage.
Luckily for us, Land Rover did have a strong heritage in the region, but it has faded. Land Rover set out to build an engaging creative communications platform to bring out stories of the land’s heritage, culture, people and places; all fuelled by the brand to re-ignite relevance and pride.

We wanted to re-connect with them within a context they were comfortable with and in an environment that resonates with them. This is why we decided to create a movement that didn’t set out to sell cars, but reignite pride in a shared legacy.

We needed an authentic rallying call, hence ARDHI has been introduced, a word that celebrates the Arab world’s love for their land. The term translated as ‘MY LAND’ in English.

The Implementation

The ARDHI platform would cover to life across four areas that we identified are key to the local Emirati culture: Storytelling, Poetry/Calligraphy, Adventure and Music.
STORYTELLING:
Amongst a collection of initiatives under the ARDHI platform which showcased and celebrated this regions identity, we joined forces with some of the regions stand-out individuals who went that extra mile to represent
their land in a unique but exceptional way.
MY JOURNEY. MY INSPIRATION documented the compelling
stories of some of the regions finest talent in sports, art and adventure travel, linking them back to the sense
of pride these individuals experienced as a result of representing their respective countries. An integrated rollout plan in conjunction with the Land Rover creative and social media agencies resulted in over 3.1 million regional views of MJMI content which was housed on the dedicated ARDHI platform
POETRY/CALLIGRAPHY: We started out by writing a poetic invitation using Arabic metric structure of Abyat, which was immortalised in light calligraphy sculptures across different terrains.
ADVENTURE: TROPIC OF CANCER: National Geographic Abu Dhabi partnered with Land Rover to showcase its adventurous spirit to map Tropic of Cancer for the first time in the region.
MUSIC: MYLAND. MYMUSIC: We partnered with Sony Music Entertainment and two acclaimed maestros to create an original song in Arabic using sounds from across the region and from the land.
ARDHI HUB: A dedicated online hub (www.myland.landrover-me.com) was created to host and showcase all the stories, adventures, projects and user-generated content from the campaign.

The Result

MyLand propelled a turnaround in Land Rover’s relationship with local Arabs. People interacted with Land Rover 9-10 times that of its next closest competitor. There were ver 55,000 mentions of #MYLAND on Instagram.
Land Rover MENA currently has 60,000 more Instagram followers than core competitive set combined (Mercedes, Audi, BMW)

Over 340,000 sessions recorded on the MYLAND Hub
Land Rover MENA claimed 69% of overall YouTube views and 61% of Facebook views within core competitive set (Mercedes, Audi, BMW) between October 2014-October 2015

The real proof came when we heard from the local dealers that they were seeing more locals at their locations interested in Land Rovers.
For the first time in decades, Land Rover has truly embraced its Middle Eastern heritage and people embraced it back.