We’ve worked on a lot of big campaigns at CarExpert, but this was a little different. Nissan hid a brand-new Patrol somewhere in the South Australian outback and invited Australians to go find it.

It sounds slightly ridiculous when you say it out loud, which is probably why so many people paid attention. The campaign was created with TBWA, Revolver and Glue Society, with CarExpert brought in as a major media and content partner alongside Seven West Media.

Our team helped launch the campaign and drive the story across our audience, starting with the first major clue drop on CarExpert.com.au. 

From there, things escalated pretty quickly.

More than 1,000 Australians submitted video entries hoping to be selected. Five finalist teams were eventually flown into the Bendleby Ranges in South Australia, where they tackled hundreds of kilometres of rugged tracks searching for the hidden Patrol.

Sunrise crosses went live from the middle of nowhere. People were decoding clues online. Everyone involved became slightly obsessed with whether someone was actually going to find the thing.

Bilgen Tug, Nissan Director of Brand and Customer Experience, said the campaign was built around the Patrol’s long connection with Australian adventure and off-roading.

“Leveraging Patrol’s long history in Australia, we sought to intrigue Australia’s 4x4 communities and adventurers at heart,” he said.

“To do so, we celebrated how a Nissan Patrol can give anyone the opportunity to explore all that the Australian landscape has to offer, and captured those moments in an authentic way.”

For CarExpert, it was the kind of campaign we love being part of because it didn’t feel like traditional advertising. It gave us the chance to create content people actually wanted to follow, while showing how brands can use CarExpert to reach highly engaged automotive audiences in a much more integrated way than a standard media buy.

The campaign eventually wrapped up with mother-and-son team Beth and Travers finding the hidden Patrol and driving it home.

Honestly, after watching how much effort everyone put into tracking it down, they earned it.