Case Study: Big data, big stories

Driving global brand awareness and sales lead generation for INRIX

Traffic congestion isn’t just an annoying fact of life, it’s a problem that costs the global economy hundreds of billions of dollars each year.

By 2050 there will be 9.7 billion people in the world, 70 percent of whom will live in cities. Over the same period, road and rail travel will double, and freight volumes will triple. So without smart solutions, the impact on lives and the drag on economies will get worse.

INRIX uses ‘big data’ to understand the problem and help develop intelligent transportation systems. Armed with the right data and insights, city planners and engineers can make data-based decisions to prioritize spending on infrastructure improvements and solve urban mobility problems, now and for the future.

INRIX had ambitious growth plans, but faced the significant task of gaining mindshare with a global prospect base spread over thousands of cities and countries in all corners of the world. It knew it had to raise its external profile — made all the more challenging by the fact it provides ‘white-label’ b2b solutions — as well as convey the sense of urgency needed in solving urban mobility problems adversely affecting consumers, businesses and economies.

So it partnered with Creation to help promote its brand, establish it as the premier authority on urban mobility and drive sales lead generation.

We knew that INRIX’s biggest competitive advantage was the quality and scale of its traffic data. So we worked with INRIX’s marketing team to creatively re-tool its annual Traffic Scorecard report, which had been published for the previous 10 years, and use it as the spearhead for a global campaign to own the space.

We started by putting the audience at the heart of our strategy. To drive mainstream cut-through via earned, owned and social channels, we knew the report had to fuel stories that would connect to both consumers as well as city planners. So we consulted with INRIX’s analyst team and senior economists, who then crunched the numbers and turned traffic data into real-life insights about the impact on the economy, jobs and urban living in cities around the world. The effect of employment rates, population growth and new construction on traffic volumes and congestion were all factored in to provide a rich, layered picture of 21st century urban mobility — with actionable insights for city and national government.

We created rich data visualizations in multiple languages to bring key insights to life in a compelling and engaging way: providing city by city and country by country comparisons, playing on the friendly rivalries that exist between them.

The report and campaign assets were hosted on a micro-site, including gated content to capture sales leads. Overall, more than 500 terabytes of data from 500 million sources went in the analysis, covering 1,064 cities in 38 countries.

Working with INRIX’s marketing team we then drove integrated earned, owned and social outreach to promote the report and the INRIX band.

As part of our earned media strategy we generated multiple story lines, covering everything from economic impact and lost productivity to the cost of time and fuel wasted for an average driver and worst city traffic hotspots. In total, we generated 32.5 billion earned impressions, securing more than 2,100 national and local media hits (including 445 broadcast segments). We achieved coverage from Columbia to Canada, Belgium to Thailand, and a blanket sweep of national outlets in INRIX’s most important markets: the US, UK and Germany.

A cadence of targeted social posts were published by INRIX through its own feeds which, together with organic traction from earned coverage, generated thousands of re-posts and re-tweets. More than 12 million people were reached via Twitter alone.

Traffic to INRIX’s website exploded with page views increasing by 445%. Visitors from more than 86 countries downloaded the full report, with thousands of potential sales leads captured in the first 48 hours alone.

From a brand and business outcome perspective the campaign was a huge success. We achieved key message cut-through in all earned coverage, and media keep proactively coming back to INRIX as the single most quoted authoritative source. In the race for customers, the campaign has delivered a real turbo-charge for INRIX.