When the Droids Go Home: Nissan's Rogue is a Sales Stud, But What Comes Next?

If compact crossovers were feature films, Nissan’s Rogue would be tapped for an Academy Award statuette. The surging model ended a record sales year with a truly boffo month, and Nissan can give partial thanks to the visibility heaped on it by the Rogue One marketing campaign.

You couldn’t escape it — simply, it was everywhere. No longer dodging monsters made out of ice, the Rogue spend the holiday season dodging lasers as it plowed across a Martian-like landscape. The automaker’s partnership with Lucasfilm took the vast marketing power of the Star Wars franchise and brought it to bear on a relative latecomer to the crossover game, cranking its exposure up to “11.”

That, coupled with a cringe-inducing (or lustworthy) limited-edition Rogue and an end-of-year sales push, made the Rogue the best-selling non-pickup vehicle in the U.S. for the month of December. Unfortunately for Nissan, nothing lasts forever. Rogue One won’t stay in theaters forever, and there’s no new partnership on the horizon.

What to do?

According to Automotive News, whatever the plan is, Nissan wants everyone in on it. The Rogue One campaign saw full dealer participation and an all-hands-on-deck approach to marketing the product. No longer would a distant ad agency handle all the exposure.

Jeremy Tucker, vice president of marketing, communications and media at Nissan North America, told the publication that all future marketing efforts will use the Rogue One campaign as a template.

“The Rogue Sport is coming and we want to create that recognition again, the excitement around it,” said Tucker. “It’s all part of the master plan: How do you start to kind of drive that recognition and break through to consumers?”

The Rogue Sport — an overseas market Nissan Qashqai — arrives this spring to flesh out the brand’s utility lineup. Of course, by that time, there won’t be much left of the Rogue One campaign. During the Star Wars push, dealers placed certain models close to the Rogue, hoping that the crossover’s appeal would boost exposure of other vehicles and offers. An online campaign targeted potential buyers in their homes.

“What I’ve learned from this, and what I’m going to replicate, is how can we do this in every piece of big marketing we have for every big launch, to get this level of dealer engagement and involvement,” said Tucker.

So, just how successful was the Rogue in December? With 40,477 sales in the U.S., the model topped the performance of both the Toyota RAV4 (37,214) and Honda CR-V (37,778), both of which were enjoying the strongest sales month of 2016. It’s understandable Nissan doesn’t want to mess with a winning formula. The problem now becomes finding another splashy partner.

[Image: Nissan]