Engaging Hyundai Interactive

When it comes to interactive campaigns and online advertising, there is one simple rule. It's got to be engaging. If it's not, people just won't take notice. But there is a line that you shouldn't cross - like I just experienced with the Volkswagen GT island on www.carsales.com.au - why in the world would anyone want to pretend to change fake gears on your banner ad? Or is it just me?!

This month we launched the Hyundai Mid Year Sale interactive campaign complete with the whole array of online advertising; Flash banners, Content ads, Search Marketing and Landing pages.

With initial campaign preparation we very carefully experiment with the level of engagement needed to lure in the customer. We complete a few concept banners and have internal test groups view demo pages with the concept banners in place, we get their feed back on what drags their eyes to the banner and then make adjustments to get the right feeling from our banners before sending off the best concept to client.

One thing we almost always steer away from is tacky interaction between the user and our banners in online advertising. The whole "click to use the gearstick" of the latest Volkswagen campaign is one of the poorest executions I've seen in a while and it not only doesn't interest me to play with their gear stick but is completely non engaging - it's a static, boring, pointless banner. At the end of the day, that is a waste of their online advertising budget.

The Hyundai Mid Year Sale campaign banners use animated flowing lines to draw the users attention, while featuring simple clear and concise text to give the user a exactly what they are after - simplified, direct information that gives them everything thing they need to know before clicking that ad. (you can view our ads on all the car sites with a great example being the island on the home page of carsales.com.au)

Clicking through brings you to the new Hyundai Offers Landing page. Where we addressed an issue that would be important for all car companies, including Hyundai - that's getting the entire range to look good on a single page, be engaging and usable and interactive.

Hence our interactive team came up with a 3D perspective wheel that allows us to show off every car in the range on a single screen with some interactive eye candy to boot! The Hyundai Offers page gives users the ability to select the car of their preference to see the latest offers on that vehicle, with functionality to book a test drive, order brochures and compare cars against other brands!

Our search marketing component provides a steady flow of traffic to our offers page through strategically targeted key words and ad copy. We are careful not to be too generic and balance a campaign to be effective on both volume, exposure and conversion. It's also important to note that research and strategy play an enormous part in the success of search marketing, which is one of the fastest evolving industries on the planet.

One of the major advantages of a successful campaign is a rounded experience for the user and ensuring that at every click they are comfortable with the process being directly related to the original call to action. This means that once a user clicks your web banner or Google ad that the page must replicate similar content to that of which they expect to see, and not go straight to the home page or worse too deep into the website.

This is where landing pages are extremely valuable and are loaded up with the most relevant content to engage users and provide them with options to further explore and take the next step. Get this all right and your user will be funnelled down the path of your choice.