Land Rover mixes a virtual graphic novel with real-life celebrities

The campaign is named ‘The Evoque effect’. Wunderman is the creative agency and Mindshare is strategically placing the graphic novels across key virtual platforms in China.

The eight-part mini-series campaign kicks off from 6 July, and will remain active and live until 10 August. It aims to get on to the radar of consumers who live online by weaving the Range Rover Evoque into a graphic James-Bond style detective novel, combined with real-life acting by Chinese celebrities such as Zhu Zhu (who is a MTV VJ) to connect with the 30-something target audience.

This graphic novel and digital content follows the story of an architect who believes someone is out to get him. The story is intelligently transformed into comic strips and further integrated to become a full scale digital campaign.

Wunderman invited New-York based comic illustrator Becky Cloonan to create all the graphics, giving it a truly American comic style. The  commerical was directed by Hollywood film veteran Gil Wadsworth.

Bryce Whitwam, GM of Wunderman Shanghai said, "This format of combining illustration with live action film is totally unique in commercial industry in China, the story is excellent."

“Graphic novels are the best way to tell a story to time-poor audience with short attention spans,” said Linda Lin, MD, Mindshare Shanghai.  “We reached out to Range Rover’s target in the digital space for the very same reason – to illustrate content and get the audience to absorb them in the quickest possible way without losing the quality.”

The team uses digital media to provide real-time and two-way communication between users and the brand. This includes the creation of Weibo Bao (or 'poster' in Chinese) as a platform to encourage users to interact and create personalised online posters.

“We are very pleased with their clever, innovation media execution of the Range Rover Evoque campaign,” praised Yao Lei, e-marketing manager, Land Rover China.