HAVAL is the number one foreign car brand in Russia by sales, with a range of models built for different audiences. The SUV market is crowded with offers from both premium and mass-market brands, while the technical specifications of the models keep converging. Most players communicate the same way: rational arguments plus status as the main emotional benefit. As a result, brands lose their own identity and buyers lose focus at the moment of choice. A separate challenge for the brand: its models speak to audiences that don't overlap either in life or in media. That normally means three separate campaigns which never add up to a brand. The project faced a choice — compete for attention on the territory where everyone else plays, or stand apart through a solution that builds an emotional connection.
Problem
Overall goal: strengthen the emotional connection with the audience during the year's biggest season by bringing three incompatible audiences together in one project. — Communications: break away from the category language of status and rational specifications through emotional content. — Media: drive engagement and positive response across the brand's social channels. — Product: show three models through a story rather than a list of specifications. — Business: generate test drive requests.
Solution
HAVAL's three audiences don't overlap either in life or in media. Except for one evening a year, when they all do the same thing — set off to celebrate New Year. Idea. An interactive New Year mini-series in which the viewer decides the fate of the characters across three parallel stories. Execution. The three novellas were released as separate films on the brand's channels: a solitary man who long ago stopped treating New Year as a holiday; a young family whose forest house rental turned out to be a scam; friends who blew a tyre where there was no signal. Each story broke off at the moment the characters had to make a decision. The continuation opened in a chatbot — on the same platform, with no jump to a website. The video story turned into a graphic novel: the live-action characters were redrawn as comics, and the user's choices changed how events unfolded. 18 scenes, 6 endings. Once the activation closed, a fourth film was released: the three stories converged on a single New Year's evening. One story for everyone, and a different one for each.
Results
Engagement: 5,700 participants played through the stories 9,121 times — one in three came back for a different ending. Positive comments grew fourfold. Media: 3M views of the films, +3,900 followers. Business: 113 test drive requests.
