Honda targets cool moms with craving game

If you were to search for “gossip”, “cupcakes”, “chocolate” or “banana splits”, would you necessarily expect to be directed to a car manufacturer’s site?

by Helen Leggatt

honda%20logo.gif As part of a new advertising campaign for the CR-V sport utility vehicle, Honda has purchased thousands of non-automotive keywords. Why? Because they are looking to attract their target audience, “cool moms in their 30’s”, to visit a new “Guess What You Crave” game as part of Honda’s CR-V marketing push.

The ad agency behind the campaign, RPA in Santa Monica, California, hopes to create the same buzz as Burger King’s Subservient Chicken video did a couple of years ago. Instead of a chicken that appears to do as it’s told by the viewer, the CR-V game uses an image of the automobile’s navigation screen to ask the user 20 questions, after which it “guesses” their craving.

Buzz is becoming more and more important to online marketers, especially automakers, as 70 percent of car shoppers research models online. A decade ago, people would visit a car dealership around 6 times before they made a purchase decision, but this figure has now dropped to 1.7 visits, as the Internet increasingly becomes their number one source of information.