Honda Motors drove consideration for its HR-V model

7.8M

total impressions

46%

above vertical benchmark

0.93%

leading CTR result

Objective

Honda Motors is a globally recognized household name, consistently being named as one of the best overall auto brands. However, maintaining its status in a competitive market requires consistent innovation and creative marketing strategies to deliver value to its customers.

Throughout 2023, Honda set an ambitious goal of generating consideration for HR-Vs by encouraging Nextdoor neighbors in the UK to learn more about the model. Given that Nextdoor is ultimately a recommendations-based platform where our neighbors come to connect based on proximity and get things done, it was an ideal platform to help Honda roll out its campaign. Moreover, 84% of Nextdoor neighbors in the UK own at least 1 vehicle, making it optimal for Honda to take advantage of Nextdoor’s high-intent audience and convert neighbors into customers.

Solution

Honda leveraged Sponsored Posts in the newsfeed to encourage neighbors to learn more about the HR-V model. Local sub callout was used in the headline, along with a clear product image and CTA as well as repetition of the product name to drive recall and engagement.

Nextdoor also ran a Lucid Brand Lift study on behalf of the brand, which showed strong brand results and significant lifts in Awareness, Consideration, and Favorability at the campaign level. The campaign significantly improved multiple brand KPIs including:

Brand Awareness: Up 3.4 points (with a 90% confidence interval)
Brand Consideration: Up 3.3 points (with a 90% confidence interval)
Brand Favorability: Up 3.7 points (80% confidence interval)

Moreover, Honda drove more awareness, favorability, and consideration in comparison to competitors while older users saw significant impact on awareness and consideration.

The brand also worked with Nextdoor to run an Oracle Moat Analytics study to measure the following:

Universal Interaction: The percentage of impressions where a user entered the frame of the ad and remained active for at least 0.5 seconds.
On-Screen Rate: The percentage of impressions where at least one pixel of the ad was in-view with focus.
In-View Rate: The percentage of impressions where at least 50% of an ad was In-View for at least one continuous second. If the ad is larger in area than 970x250 (eg. 300x1050 or 970x418), then it only needs to have 30% of its area In-View.
Universal Touch Rate: The percentage of impressions where an ad has been touched on a mobile device.

Results

The campaign was extremely successful when compared to industry benchmarks, particularly in terms of driving top-of-funnel awareness. Nearly all creatives drove a significant impact on awareness, and the static display units consistently outperformed. All creative assets exceeded our vertical benchmark and, on average, the campaign performed 46% above vertical benchmarks for CTR, with the top-performing piece of creative driving an exceptionally strong CTR of 0.93%.

Moreover, the Honda Motors campaign drove organic increases in neighbors searching for and mentioning “Honda HR-V,” showing interest, intent and recommendation among exposed users which drove higher levels of campaign interaction. Platform searches for “Honda HR-V” increased by 16% YoY and platform mentions of "HR-V" increased 20% pre/post campaign.

When it came to the Oracle Moat Analytics study, all four key areas exceeded their MOAT benchmark by a significant margin. The biggest increase against benchmark took place across Universal Interaction, which exceeded the benchmark of 3.3% by 467%. In Universal Touch Rate, the campaign performed 111% above MOAT benchmarks, in On-Screen Rate the campaign performed 102% above MOAT benchmarks, and in In-View Rate, the campaign performed 25% above benchmark.