CorpComms Magazine

A quintessential stalwart of British motoring, the Land Rover has long been synonymous with country gents, muddy country lanes and horse boxes. Yet Land Rover's latest brand campaign is aimed at a rather more glamorous audience.

The new Range Rover Evoque, with its tag line 'the power of presence', is deliberately targeted at a younger, more female audience. Fiona Pargeter, global PR director at Land Rover, explains: 'The objective is to attract new customers. We wanted 80 per cent of the Evoque customers to be new customers to the Land Rover brand and for it to appeal to a 50:50 male/female drivers.'

But with a new crowd, comes a change of direction in Land Rover's brand marketing after its own research found that three quarters of target customers considered it too old fashioned. The model was first unveiled more than a year ago at an event at Kensington Palace, but the media launch was far more state-of-the art.

As soon as urban oriented and motoring journalists stepped onto the planes to take them to the Media Drive in August they were presented with iPads with an app containing information about the car. 'Historically, Land Rover had been judged as formal and controlled. At a Ford launch you'd be given a set of keys and told you could do what you wanted,' explains Paul Owen, communications director at Cricket, one of several agencies that worked on the campaign. 'This time we wanted to give journalists a format to discover what they wanted when they wanted by way of the app.'

The iPad app, which was translated into eight languages, included an overview from various employees involved in the design of the product including the design and manufacturing director. 'If I work for a trade publication focusing on diesel cars, I could skip the design information and go straight to vehicle dynamics,' Owen explains. The car manufacturer also courted the blogging community, distributing cars to ten opinion formers in key cities in its target markets.

Modern campaigns have meant a reassessment of the traditional PR performance metrics for the media relations team. 'It was the first time we'd had a sales metric assigned to PR,' Pargeter explains. 'We had targets such as Keep Me Informed (KMIs) and pre-orders but our success will ultimately be measured as a sales target. My role ultimately is to build and protect the brand and sell cars.'

Pargeter believes that changing buying habits among consumers is necessitating a closer relationship between marketing and PR, in part because of the hugely influential motoring media. 'Traditionally we would talk to journalists and marketing would talk to customers but decisions are increasingly being made in the online space. Ten years ago people visited a dealership six to eight times before making a purchase. Now they go once and they place their order,' explains Pargeter.

PR and marketing at Land Rover work alongside each other and have separate reporting lines to the chief executive. The team has not restructured but it has grown a social media team that works as part of both teams. 'My boss (the head of PR) sits on the board and reports to the chief executive and the same is true for the marketing department,' adds Pargeter. 

Titles such as Top Gear have gone from strength to strength. 'Its global reach is enormous and the rising importance of the online space is meaning that PR and marketing are coming together,' Pargeter says. 'I don't think this kind of approach is unique to the automotive industry; we are seeing more agencies offering a hybrid of PR and marketing. It's about creating a brand strategy and a story that is interesting for the media to write about.'

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