Groupe Renault’s Nissan brand is returning to the Super Bowl this year for the first time in six years with a :60 spot featuring its highly anticipated 2023 crossover vehicle Aria and the 2023 Nissan Z sports car.
“The Super Bowl is a very considered investment and it’s a huge thing for brands to get into it. For Nissan, we felt that this was the right year to do that,” Allyson Witherspoon, CMO of Nissan Motor Corporation told Brand Innovators. “We have been investing in our brand. We’ve been running a year long brand campaign and we’ve also been on a massive product transformation, and we’re getting ready to launch two incredible vehicles.”
The spot comes on the heels of a year long brand campaign that Nissan focused on the message: your car should thrill you. “Our platform and our mission is to thrill consumers at every turn,” explains Witherspoon. “We felt that with that brand momentum, this product transformation with these new vehicles that we’re gonna be launching this year, this year was the right year for Nissan to go back into the Super Bowl.”
The brand shared teasers of the “Thrill Driver” spot last week and this week dropped the full ad. The spot stars iconic actor Eugene Levy, alongside Danai Gurira, Dave Bautista and Nissan Brand Ambassador Brie Larson. In the spot Levy transforms from his usual comedic self into an all-out action star.
“We liked the story of the Nissan transforming you into something unexpected, with this idea that one drive changes everything,” explained Witherspoon. “When we were thinking about the type of cast, we had a few different people in mind but when Eugene Levy’s name was on the list, I just thought he would be perfect to tell this transformation story. When you see him at the very beginning, it’s the Eugene Levy you know and love. And then throughout the course of the spot, he transforms into this badass action star that is unexpected for him. And then obviously, we wanted to make sure that he was surrounded by equally badass actors, as well. And so it was great to work with that Danai and Dave, and obviously, we have Brie Larson, who is our Nissan brand ambassador, and, and she is an action star in her own right, so the whole cast just kind of came together and it just felt like it was this perfect group of people to help us tell this story.”
The brand is hoping that digital will amplify its television buy and has been building up the momentum for the spot with two movie trailer-style teaser ads and then dropped the full ad ahead of time on YouTube. Additionally, the company is promoting the campaign in social media and are partnering with entertainment influencers. The brand has even created an action figure of Eugene Levy and they are working with influencers on unboxing the toy.
Additionally, the brand has created a Snapchat lens that uses augmented reality to allow users to take over any other vehicle advertising that’s going to be running during the Super Bowl. “So all you do is you use the lens, it’ll scan any other vehicle, in their advertisements, and actually a Nissan Z will come out of that,” said Witherspoon.
The new vehicles come in a year that the automotive industry has been hard hit by supply chain issues. Like other brands in the business, Nissan has had to adapt.
“What we’ve learned since 2020, is how to be much more agile in how we go to market with our marketing plans,” said Witherspoon. “Throughout the course of the last year, we’ve been able to make adjustments along the way, as we’re looking at what our production allocation is. For us. It didn’t fundamentally change what our focus was, which was really around supporting the brand, just some tactics here and there. We did have to optimize and evaluate and sometimes defer plans when we didn’t have as much inventory on the ground.”
The brand has spent the last year talking about its heritage and our legacy and how that has led into the brand’s future vehicle products. This quarter Nissan is talking about electrification and their legacy as leaders and pioneers in electrification. The Super Bowl spot will be bookended by the brand’s electrification campaign, which also stars Brie Larson.
With game day a little more than a week away, Witherspoon predicts Super Bowl ads will be more cheerful this year.
“The Super Bowl will be a good mix of emotion and humor,” she said. “There is COVID fatigue and so advertisers are going to lean into that. You’re also going to see some innovative use of what the future looks like in places like the metaverse, you’re going to get a wide range. But overall, I think the tenor is definitely going to be more lighthearted than maybe what it was last year.”
