We PR pros, often take advantage of National [Something] Days/Months/Weeks to help make our clients’ news relevant and, let’s fact it, there usually is a day/week or month set aside for almost everything.
Well, the other day, I saw the carmaker Hyundai is taking it to a new level by enlisting consumers to help make August “National Fuel Efficiency Month.”
The brilliance here is in the simplicity.
The campaign is driven by a Facebook petition, which will most assuredly deliver more fans for Hyundai.
But, that’s just the icing on the cake. It doesn’t matter if Hyundai gets new Facebook fans. It doesn’t even matter if enough people sign the petition to claim the month, although if they do get enough signatures just imagine what Hyundai can do with that! They would “own” August! What PR pro doesn’t want that opportunity to play with?!
Still, what really matters is that Hyundai has cleverly aligned their brand with fuel efficiency through a campaign that puts the carmaker’s own fuel efficiency record front and center.
Nearly every blogger and reporter who has covered this campaign has repeated this message: The company was deemed by the EPA as the most fuel-efficient automaker in the U.S. for model year 2010, the most recent that was officially tracked by the agency. And through May, Hyundai’s new car fleet averaged more than 37 miles per gallon, about 50 percent higher than the U.S. average.
And, those who aren’t using that message tend to reference the carmaker’s position as having the highest average fuel economy and lowest C02 of any manufacturer in the U.S.
It’s always hard to rise above all the news noise out there and this is a super clever way for Hyundai to “own” fuel efficiency. So, well done guys! Here’s hoping you get August, if only so I can see how you use it!
Did you sign the petition?
I did. 🙂 It was too cool not to sign it! 🙂
Well – Thank you.