The Idea
Take a fundamental childhood experience – the seesaw – and transform it into a world record challenge for a global car brand.
The Story
Deep down, we are all children at heart. We love to play and have fun, and we really love a thrilling – and dangerous! – spectacle. So when Jaguar Land Rover asked us to develop a show-stopping campaign to drive online voting for their new Evoque Convertible and Hardtop brands, well, we couldn’t resist.
Our client wanted to ensure that the vehicle kept its cool and unique image and gained ground on the competition. The client turned to Pico, seeking an unconventional campaign that would dazzle, shine and create brand appeal for both the Evoque Hardtop and Convertible.
The team went back in time to our childhoods, thinking long and hard about all the fun things we did. Lots of thoughts and emotions bubbled up through our minds – how much pleasure it gave us to be around cool cars, the excitement of exciting and daring feats, the joy of playground equipment like slides, rocking horses and seesaws. What about…a seesaw for cars. A record-breaking one!
And we were off! We spent two months working with structural engineers designing the longest vehicle seesaw the world had ever seen. Located against a dynamic urban backdrop, in Shanghai Expo Celebration Square, suspended 45 feet off the ground and a mighty 82 feet long, the seesaw balanced the Jaguar Land Rover Evoque Convertible on one side and the Evoque Hardtop on the other.
The campaign integrated both Above-The-Line(ATL) and Below-The-Line (BTL) elements in the unprecedented five-week long campaign. The client proposed popularising the event through a live vote on Sina Weibo. Pico team responded by setting up a unique voting system which saw the results of the vote broadcast live on an LED screen at the top of the seesaw – the seesaw actually moved according to which car got more votes! Meanwhile, the event was also advertised through a variety of different formats around the venue – road flags, light boxes in parking areas and an outdoor backdrop ad beginning one week before the event.
After careful preparation and several last-minute adjustments to take the rain into account, it was time for the fun. When the online votes started coming in, the cars rocked back and forth in the sky thanks to the pure skill of two professional driving instructors, using no hydraulic pressure at all.
Guinness Book of World Records
While the Evoque Hardtop eventually ‘won’ the poll with 16,789 votes; everyone was a winner when the official representative from the Guinness Book of World Records announced that we had broken the world record for the longest vehicle seesaw at 25.077m (82 feet 3 inches).
It was only appropriate to cap off the evening with a victory lap for the Evoque Hardtop through the seesaw and onto the stage, and with a final stunning fireworks display. What a fantastic time!
The Numbers
Audience: around 30,000 on site,
Online engagement stats:
-23,107,000 viewed the live stream
- Total view figures on the brand’s Weibo channel was double the previous view record of the Evoque campaign and 3.3 times higher than the average page view number of the platform.
The Reaction
The challenging launch campaign showed the constant pursuit of innovation of Land Rover and the unique lifestyle of the Evoque. We are honoured and proud to have broken the Guinness World Record for the longest vehicle seesaw.
-Mr Mark Hall, Executive Vice President of Integrated Marketing Sales and Service (IMSS)
[IMSS was jointly established by Jaguar Land Rover China and Chery Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Co., Ltd.]
This was a challenging, innovative and interesting project. There were demanding controls on both the production of the on-site facilities and the operation of the seesaw. - Official representative of Guinness World Records
