National Geographic Nordics: Car SOS

While National Geographic needs no introduction as a brand on social media, the Nordics team felt that engagement in their market was low. It was easy to see why – a local touch was missing from their comms, as a lot of the content they were using was coming from the global content pool and then being adapted for the region. National Geographic Nordics wanted to see if producing original content tailored to each country would address the issue.

Spoon was tasked with conceptualising and producing the four original films. To ramp up the local angle, each video was built around a challenge, which would resonate with the people of each country, increasing engagement. These would then be localised and cross-promoted.

Our exceptional creativity, experience with distribution, and proven ability to deliver within very short timelines convinced National Geographic Nordics to partner with us on this project.

Since Car SOS was a show about classic car restoration, Spoon came up with the concept of finding two hosts (a master mechanic and a parts manager) in each country and challenging them to build a model of a classic car using whatever materials they could lay their hands on. These local elements would be relatable to each of the featured countries – so ice for Finland, wood for Norway, Ikea parts for Sweden and bicycle parts for Denmark.

Spoon then localised all the videos, wrote social posts for each one and promoted them across all the four countries. A comprehensive distribution plan was put in place to coordinate the multiple markets and multiple publishing dates.

The most successful channel for the campaign was Facebook. Engagement went through the roof, with people liking, commenting and sharing the films.