Making an Impact by Spending Less | Alfa Romeo

How do you compete when competitors spend 5x more on marketing?

Background

In the United States, Alfa Romeo is a challenger brand with an attitude, but it faces stiff competition. BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi enjoy loyal owners, extensive vehicle lineups, and substantial advertising budgets. So how do you compete with competitors spending 5x more on marketing?

We wanted to do something big without spending big.

Boris Stojanovic
Executive Creative Director • Razorfish

Journey

Through data, social listening, search analytics, and other metrics, we uncovered that more than 60% of the people who test-drove Alfa Romeo vehicles bought one. Our goal was clear: get drivers behind the wheel.

To accomplish this, we decided to do something outrageous: we had Alfa Romeo crash Bimmerfest, the largest private-owner BMW event in the world. We set up a high-performance test drive course to let BMW drivers experience firsthand the thrill of an Alfa Romeo, and hosted a “My Alfa Romeo is better than your car—prove me wrong” event where BMW owners could challenge our product experts head-to-head on product features—and receive a little Italian enlightenment.

Customer entering Quadrifoglio to test drive — Quadrifoglio on the track at Bimmerfest

Alfa Romeo test drive area at Bimmerfest — Giulia and Stelvio Quadrifoglio

Alfa Romeo and BMW fans having a discussion — BMW vs. Alfa Romeo fans

Collage of tweets about Crashing Bimmerfest stunt — Bimmerfest on Twitter

Crashing Bimmerfest was a bold move that paid off big-time.

Boris Stojanovic
Executive Creative Director • Razorfish

Outcomes

More than 300 BMW owners test-drove an Alfa Romeo, and we captured hours of social media content featuring real BMW owners converting to Alfa Romeo right before our eyes.

Most importantly, we left a lasting impression at Bimmerfest—and who knows, maybe we’ll even be invited back next year.

580K
social media views
440K
social impressions
20K
engagements

Once we got people in an Alfa Romeo, the car sold itself.

Boris Stojanovic
Executive Creative Director • Razorfish

What are people saying?

For a BMW event there sure are a lot of people waiting in line to drive an Alfa Romeo #Bimmerfest2019

@columnwood
Great move sponsoring the event! I’m sure it opened a lot of eyes to how fun it is to drive an Alfa!

Rick
Alfa Romeo Facebook Page
Just say no to BMW!

Marcie
Alfa Romeo Facebook page