InMotion

The challenge

Launch a new mobility brand for Jaguar Land Rover

The greatest challenge facing traditional car manufacturers today is, ironically, how to “move beyond the car". Automakers have realised that they need to do more than just the make and sell what is one of the most transformative inventions in modern human history. That approach belongs to the 20th century.

While the car certainly remains integral to human movement – and maintains its aspirational character – it’s no longer ‘king of the road’. Consumers today are progressively interested in a multitude of transport solutions – and increasingly more interested in the idea of ‘accessing’ a car over owning one – governments worldwide are cracking down on manufacturers with tougher legislation to promote a more sustainable and a green future, and ambitious, disruptive innovators are challenging the old order with disruptive technologies. The future is digital mobility.

A little late to the party, Jaguar Land Rover was keen on doing more than catch up – it wanted to be jostling with its competitors, taken seriously as an authority and even set the agenda.

Accordingly, we were asked to put together and execute a digital strategy to position the then concept-level InMotion brand at the very heart of the emerging mobility-as-a-service industry. This included defining a tone of voice and brand identity; designing and building a new website; developing ideas for content and setting up a workflow; and establishing an editorial network of journalists and industry experts in mobility and the tech startup scene.

Oh, and to do all of this in six weeks.

The approach

Think like an online publisher, act like a startup

There was a lot that needed doing. InMotion had no tone of voice, no sense of identity and no content to launch with. As the client explained, it was as if they were “building a new type of car while driving it”.

In response, we decided to approach the project as a startup would. That meant being agile – to test and learn, break and fail, and adapt and evolve as we progressed to our deadline.

It proved to be a highly effective approach. By the end of the first phase, InMotion’s tone of voice had begun to take shape, the editorial network was growing, and the look and feel of the website had been sketched out.

The audience

Connecting with a mix of key audiences across the globe

Behavioural changes in consumers that emerge as a result of technological advances often seem to happen without us quite knowing about it. And before we know it, we’re banking with our smartphones as if this is how it’s always been, and streaming movies, music TV shows across a range of devices with the kind of ease that suggests we’ve been doing this for years.

The same can be said of transport. While Google Maps, Uber and Citymapper, to name but a few, have subtly changed the way we move on a daily basis, many of the beneficiaries of this tech wouldn’t necessarily associate them with being part of a bigger trend in movement.

Using a mixture of social listening tools, desk research and stakeholder interviews, we identified that regardless of the audience - everyday commuter, Jaguar Land Rover employee, seasoned entrepreneur – there was a clear opportunity for InMotion to be a bridge between individuals and the seismic shifts underway in urban travel.

To ensure that each key audience segment would be able to access and benefit from the right kind of information at the right time, we developed pillars to form the backbone of our content: inform, influence and inspire. In short, all bases would be covered.

The UX

Designing a platform for a rich storytelling experience

Early on it was decided that content was going to be front and centre of the new InMotion platform. We were keen for the look and feel to be a little different from traditional online publishing platforms, without compromising on user experience.

Our response was the idea of an infinite scroll, which was designed to seamlessly load the next article so that users were served numerous types of content in one session. And in an understated way.

The layout for articles adhered to best practices for editorial content, with a clean aesthetic that allowed readers to focus on the text in front of them. Features like shareable pull quotes and the ability to ‘highlight and share’ snippets of text made sharing an intuitive process, too.

Complementing this was a menu to the immediate left of an ‘open’ article, which served up related pieces of content. Again, this was another effective way of keeping readers engaged without them having to leave the page they were on.

The content

Creating the new home of
mobility news and insight

With a clear strategy outlined and the website build underway, my focus now shifted to setting up and managing the production process to ensure that we would be able to deliver a sizeable batch of high-quality content – from articles to infographics to videos and animations – for launch, as well as on an ongoing basis.

I relied on the project management software Redbooth and G Suite to manage multiple workflows in a streamlined way – i.e. commissioning one piece of work while providing feedback for another and signing off on a pitch elsewhere.

ideation was collaborative, with initial concepts being developed during a number of editorial meetings that were led by myself and informed by our strategy. Once ideas were signed off, a detailed brief was created for each piece of content to provide contributors with a rationale the commission, as well as all the key requirements required to make it an effective, original and engaging piece of content.

Work was assigned strategically to writers and thinkers that we’d assembled for the ‘InMotion Network’, and this included seasoned journalists and industry experts. This approach not only helped InMotion develop its brand and reach organically across the globe, but also positioned the startup as a thought leader with strong connections in the media, tech and the mobility space … right from the get-go.

The results

Six weeks of hard work, six months of innovative success

Amazingly, we were able to launch InMotion on time – that was just six weeks to put together a new brand, build a new website and create and publish a wide selection of content from contributors across the world.

It was an immediate success, with a collaborative PR effort between Mediablaze and InMotion resulting in around 6,000 views of the website in the first 48 hours of launch, more than 12,000 social media mentions, and over 200 articles in high domain authority news sites (including The Verge, Tech Crunch and the Financial Times).

Six months later, InMotion became the UK’s most visited website for digital mobility.

Key stats

• 73% of visitors read more than two articles per visit

• 3.27 minutes: average article read time

• 7,000 unique visits a month

Assets belong to InMotion and Mediablaze respectively.