Range Rover Evoque finds the Pulse of the City with its new App

When I first heard of Land Rover’s new social media campaign for the Range Rover Evoque, I was in two minds. On the face of it, this is a campaign that ticks all the boxes, but then perhaps it’s also biting off more than it can chew…

Land Rover have recruited more than 40 celebs and trendsetters to tweet about the new Evoque 4×4. The ‘Pulse of the City’ iPhone app takes advantage of the very latest IOS4+ operating system from Apple – so there’s also a technology story to follow. The content within the app evolves through the crowd-sourced submissions of users in response to the question “What inspires you about your city?” and uses the latest location-based data available from the iPhone’s GPS capabilities to create a visualisation of each user’s journey enabling them to share this via Facebook, Twitter and e-mail.

Wow! This all sounds like a social media smorgasbord – surely there’s nothing further they could have packed into this campaign?

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And that might be its undoing. You see when brands and agencies design these campaigns they have to contend with two competing factors – the need for diversity to engage the interests of a wide enough audience and the generally low appetite users have to participate in complex marketing events.

If the campaign is too simple and straightforward then a user can make a choice whether to participate without opening up the package to see what’s inside, this places considerable emphasis on hitting the right target first-time with little opportunity to make amends once underway.

However social media campaigns need to provide sufficient flex to let users choose how they want to experience them, and in this regard Land Rover’s ‘Pulse of the City’ app should provide something for everyone to enjoy.

Land Rover’s choice of ‘Global City Shapers’ could be a bit of a hurdle though – how many of them have you heard of or can relate to? (see below)

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And whilst Land Rover may wish to position the Evoque as the new stylish must-have soft-roader, wheeling out more than 40 designers, models, fashion designers and TV personalities looks like their trying just a little too hard. Wouldn’t it have made sense to include a mix of social and wealth classes? The Evoque is after all supposed to connect with ordinary people.

A report produced last weekend claimed that celebrities are now earning up to £32,000 per month by tweeting endorsements of brands to their legions of followers. Rapper Snoop Dogg and Kim Kardashian have been paid anything from $5,000 to $10,000 for a single tweet, however in the US promoted tweets have to be preceded by the words “ad” or “spon,” so at least these endorsements have some visibility. There are however no such rules in the UK. Land Rover are the first car maker to engage celebrities in such a campaign on Twitter, so it will be interesting to see how well the UK audience responds.

The iPhone app is available now (android available from mid November) and uses GPS tracking to record the collective movements of people within the ten cities. Users will be sent a graphical representation of their journey which they can display on the helloevoque.com website promoting the Evoque – while users can share their journeys with friends by using Twitter, Facebook and email.

Users will be invited to join 40+ ‘City Shapers’ including influencers Daisy Lowe, Henry Holland, Georgina Chapman, George Lamb, Jessica Schwarz, Josh Rubin and Dylan Jones who will be able to add comments about their favourite places, hot spots and journeys, creating a real time, evolving pulse of each city.

If you’d like to join in, then the ‘Pulse of the City’ app can be downloaded from iTunes or from the iPhone App Store.

The current list of the ‘City Shapers’ chosen for the campaign include;

New York
Georgina Chapman – Fashion designer
Josh Rubin – Founder & editor of Cool Hunting
Piers Fawkes – Founder and CEO of Psfk.com

London
Henry Holland – Fashion designer
Dylan Jones – Editor of GQ
George Lamb – Presenter
Ben Shephard – TV personality and presenter
Daisy Lowe – Model

Moscow
Vasily Esmanov – Editor in Chief – Look at Me
Aurora – TV presenter and actress
Gennady Yosefavichus – Producer and journalist
Vlad Lisovets – Stylist & TV presenter

Sao Paulo
Mariana Weickert – TV personality
Baixo Ribeiro – Gallery owner
Osgemeos – Graffiti artist duo

Milan
Neil Barret – Designer
Sergio Cerruti – DJ
Natasha Slater – DJ & socialite
Francesca Versace – Designer

Madrid
Santi Millán – Actor
Paco Roncero – Chef
Tommy Robredo – Tennis player
Eugenia Silva – Model

Paris
Natalie Simon – TV presenter
Greg Kozo – Make The Girl Dance
Julia Restoin Roitfeld – Art Editor

Berlin
Jessica Schwarz – Actress
Tadi Rock – Pop-Art artist

Sydney
Sarah-Jane Clarke – Designer and co-founder of Sass & Bide
Heidi Middleton – Designer and co-founder of Sass & Bide
Mia Freedman – Journalist and blogger
Peter Evans – Chef