They say never work with children or animals but media agency tmwi has rejected that advice in their work with iconic automotive brand MG.

In a bid to raise brand awareness levels and engage prospective family SUV car buyers, the agency conducted a nationwide poll of children asking whether mums or dads are the better driver.

Gary Taylor, deputy MD, at tmwi said: “The decision to buy a car takes a lot of factors into consideration: aspirational, latest technology, value, specifications and so on. But to engage our potential customers, we needed to think laterally - understanding their daily passion points was key to creating a conversion. To that end the hot topic of who is the better driver, Mums or Dads, came about.”

As well as questioning 1,000 children aged 6-16 on the Mum vs Dad debate via an online poll, tmwi tapped into the information they already knew about MG’s existing audience.

Taylor added: “Our data and analytics team also uncovered insights that allowed us to profile our existing audiences and understand their brand affinities and nuances as well as their attitudes towards current car buying matters such as their carbon footprint, green credentials, value and more.

“We used data and insight to inform the narrative, addressing the audience’s concerns and dialling into their passion points. Overall, we wanted to help people feel that MG as a brand, and specifically its family friendly and affordable SUV range, could be the right choice for them.”

The agency used their audience management platform to profile the MG website and media data. By matching first party data to second and third party data they built the DNA of MG consumers, and by understanding brand empathy, lifestyle attributes and sentiment towards key issues, identified topics to focus upon such as environmental concerns, value, family space and enjoyability of driving.

To extend and support the campaign, tmwi worked with six parental influencers/bloggers to create guides to travelling with children. As well as this, a humorous video of their children answering questions from the poll was created and pieced together to be amplified across multiple channels including native and social, and was housed on MG’s Content Hub, ‘Behind The Wheel,’ on a designated landing page along with the key results from the survey.

The campaign was very successful, with a total of 64 pieces of national and consumer press coverage, both in print and online, with an estimated 1m online views and 2.4m daily print readers.

MG was recently relaunched with financial backing from one of the world’s largest car manufacturers, SAIC. MG’s venture into being a more environmentally-friendly manufacturer coincides with statistics from Germany’s automotive research centre, the Chemnitz Automotive Institute, which show that a quarter of all cars in Europe will be electric by 2025.

MG launched its first electric car, the ZS EV, in September 2019, and the brand will deliver the first all-electric estate - MG5 EV - in the next few months. Prospective customers are being encouraged to register their interest for this model here.

And let’s not forget what the poll actually told us: 43% of kids named dad as the ‘best’ behind the wheel, with only 29% voting for mum. However, it was decreed that mums play the best tunes, winning 40% of the vote compared to only 31% who favoured their dads’ taste in music.