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Qashqai Car Games

January\2007

In January 2007, Nissan was preparing to launch its brand new model, the Nissan QASHQAI. A large TV and print campaign was planned for the spring, but we first needed to make the QASHQAI’s unpronounceable name famous. Our solution was to create a whole new fictional sport - Qashqai Car Games.

To do this we had to create an entire universe around the sport – everything that would make it seem real and entertaining: the history, the rules, 6 national teams, logos, crazy drivers, psychotic fans, sponsors, specifications, merchandise, as well as a footage of the QASHQAI performing fantastic stunts off giant ‘skate’ ramps.

Virals capturing different events - from abandoned shipping yards to super bowl games in Japan - were supported by an official website: www.QASHQAIcargames.com.

To make the QCG universe even bigger, after seeding the viral content on 2000 sites we had to react to and build on consumer-generated reviews, blogs & mock virals. We even created our own stories around the games to fuel ‘real or fake’ debate.

As the campaign gained impetus, we took our sport into the real world, with PR from a QCG ‘press office’, team trucks, market stalls, ramp transporters, flyers, magazines and a clothing label.

The campaign reached 212 countries and was shown on 4370 sites. In the first month, the campaign attracted over 3.5 million views, rising to 12.5 million after three months and is now well over 16 million.

From a tiny pre-launch budget, targets were exceeded by 300% across 14 European countries to give the QASHQAI a flying start when the TV ad launched a few months later.