LAUNCH OF HERTZ CHRISTMAS PRESENT RUN
This is the Hertz Christmas thankyou e-card to its customer database; a small budget, big challenge, and certainly not what you’d expect from Hertz.
The Hertz brief had two objectives. The first was to create an eDM with a Christmas message and a small gift (various discounts on rental) for #1 Club Gold customers. The second was to build the customer database Âwhich was the challenging aspect of the job. Due to its token nature, we couldn’t rely on the gift to help achieve this objective. To increase the chances of the eDM going viral, we needed a powerful idea. Our solution was entertainment with a personal touch; turning the experience itself into the gift.
Our idea involves Santa taking Hertz customers for a personalised ‘joy-ride’ before revealing their gift. The original script featured a friendly, eccentric, lead-footed Santa who drove a 70’s muscle car. But then his character and the script evolved. He became a dark uncomfortably intense Santa with prison tatts - with a unique way of offering a present. To their great credit, Hertz accepted him, gave him the database and let him loose.
Having experienced their video, users are given the option of personalising a new video for a friend and sending them on a similar white-knuckle journey. The user’s choices of name, gender and their friends sins are translated into a customized video sequence, with text overlays motion-tracked against the video in a seamless fashion. In sending on to a friend, a user generates a different experience from the one they had, more relevant to their friends own personality.
Ring tones and wallpapers are also offered - check out the link next to the animated car. This idea found the Hertz boundaries and leapt over them, breaking new ground in the brand personality. And audiences have been delighted to sit up straight and take notice.
With Present Run we proved that at Christmas - it is the thought that counts. Visit Presentrun.com.au if you’ve been good. And especially if you’ve been bad.
One comment
richard said: (on December 17th, 2007 at 4:08 pm)
awesome work