TODAY Nissan Insider looks back to the Goodwood Festival of Speed – and Nissan’s presence at the biggest event in the UK motoring calendar.
Nissan was heavily involved in this year’s festival, with an impressive stand telling a great story of excitement and innovation, and thousands of visitors checking out what the company has to offer.
To find out how successful the event had been for the company, we chatted to Guillaume Masurel, Nissan’s UK marketing director.
Thanks for your time Guillaume. How was the Festival of Speed for Nissan?
Overall we were very happy with our presence and the results we obtained there. We had several objectives and we achieved them in terms of communicating the Nismo story; in terms of launching new Note; in terms of talking about our zero-emission technology and zero-emission racing project; and in terms of talking about the performance, assets and excitement of Nissan.
That was the story we wanted to tell and we wanted to tell it by providing engaging experiences. We got good results and a good level of engagement with customers.
We had an above-target number of interactions and in total we obtained around 2,000 leads with people engaging and sharing with us.
Nissan’s stand was certainly one of the more impressive at the show.
We had a lot of stories to tell this year and therefore we decided to ramp up our presence. The size of the 
stand was bigger than last year because we had many more things to tell. We needed something more substantial in order to be able to tell all the stories.
What struck us was that there were things for people to do, not just look at…
Yes, that’s a key point because what we try to do is deliver the message in an engaging way. Innovation and excitement are our key words and we want to deliver that through the experience we provide to people. That’s why we had several activities for the customers to enjoy and experience the Nissan brand.
Is the aim to sell cars at an event such as Goodwood?
We see the festival more as a brand initiative. Our aim is to raise the profile of the brand by telling our stories of innovation and by engaging with customers. We took some leads, as I said, but there is no specific push. However, some customers will always want to be called back or receive information from a dealer. In those cases, we take their details and we pass the information on to dealers. It’s not really an objective to sell cars there though.
How important is the Goodwood Festival of Speed to Nissan?
It’s a very important event. It’s the biggest car-related event in the UK with 185,000 people attending. It’s very important from an event standpoint. Also, because we are about innovation and excitement, and accessible thrill, it’s very much in line with our brand story.
Do you manage to get along?
Of course! I was there for two days. Thursday was the Moving Motor Show day. We had some customers there, specially sports car customers who were invited to go up the hill. Then I was there on the Saturday for a more traditional Goodwood experience and to see how people interact with it. It’s a good show and provides a good customer experience.