Tag: Nissan

St. Pauli pinkelt zurück

St. Pauli is one of Hamburg’s top entertainment destinations, attracting as many as 20 million visitors a year with its popular nightclubs and legal prostitution. However the steady stream of visitors has many residents and merchants angry as the visitors often relieve themselves against walls which leaves the whole place smelling like a latrine.

So to combat this, St. Pauli merchants association is fighting back by coating the most frequented walls with Ultra Ever Dry, a hyper-hydrophobic nano paint originally developed by Nissan. Now when urine hits this paint, it splashes back, soaking the offender’s pants and shoes with his own urine.

UPDATE: Pee-repellant walls commissioned by San Franciso Public Works

Nissan NISMO Watch

To say the smartwatch industry is on the verge of exploding would be an understatement. Consumer electronics companies and chip makers are not the only players entering the wearable tech space. Nissan recently announced it is joining the fray too, with what it bills as the first smartwatch concept to connect the car and driver.

There are already a number of smartwatches on the market, including Pebble, i’m Watch, Sony SmartWatch 2 and Samsung Galaxy Gear. But out of all of them, this is the coolest looking and it actually maps to a real use case for Nissan performance fans.

Nissan is scheduled to show off the device, dubbed the Nissan NISMO Watch, at the Frankfurt Motor Show. From the video it looks pretty awesome, so I cannot wait to see it when I visit the Frankfurt Motor Show next week.

What the NISMO Watch is trying to do

Nissan positions the watch as a bridge between driver and car. The concept is designed to connect via a smartphone app using Bluetooth Low Energy and surface data that drivers and track-day fans care about, such as average speed and fuel consumption, plus broader vehicle telematics and performance information.

It also leans into biometrics. The concept includes a heart rate monitor, framing the watch as a way to understand not only the car’s performance, but the driver’s state too.

In automotive performance culture, wearable concepts like this are as much about brand signaling as they are about immediate product rollout.

Why this is a smart brand move

NISMO is Nissan’s performance identity. A watch is a compact, always-visible object that can carry that identity beyond the car itself. If you can make “performance data” feel personal and wearable, you turn a brand into a daily habit, not only a purchase decision.

The concept also stretches beyond driving. Nissan’s own materials describe a “social performance” layer, where the watch can track activity across major social networks. Even if that is more provocative than practical, it makes the point: the watch is meant to be a connected lifestyle object, not only a dashboard mirror.

The real question: usefulness vs distraction

Anything that surfaces data while driving needs restraint. The best version of this idea is “track-day and post-drive insight”, not “more screens in motion”. If the watch becomes a reason to look away from the road, the concept backfires.

What to steal if you market a performance product

  • Export the benefit into a new object. If your differentiator is hard to demo, move it into something people can touch and wear.
  • Combine machine data with human data. “Car telemetry plus biometric state” is a stronger story than either alone.
  • Make the design do half the selling. If it looks like performance gear, people will want to try it before they understand the spec sheet.
  • Keep the experience context-safe. Design interactions for before and after driving, not during critical moments.

A few fast answers before you act

What is the Nissan NISMO Watch?

It is a smartwatch concept Nissan unveiled for its NISMO performance brand, positioned as a way to connect driver and car by showing vehicle performance data and driver biometric data.

How does the watch connect to the car?

Nissan’s release describes connecting via a smartphone app using Bluetooth Low Energy, so the watch can receive telemetry and performance information.

What kind of data does it show?

Reported features include average speed and fuel consumption, access to vehicle telematics and performance data, and biometric capture via a heart rate monitor.

Why would an automaker build a smartwatch concept?

Because it signals innovation, extends the brand into daily life, and creates a tangible way to talk about connected-car data and performance identity beyond the vehicle.

What is the biggest risk with wearables tied to driving?

Distraction. Any design that encourages glances during driving can be unsafe, so the value needs to skew toward track use and post-drive insights.

The Nissan Virtual Showroom

There was a time when people would go to the dealership to research cars. But now most research (70%) is done online, with 50% of buyers stating that online information was the most influential part of their research.

So Nissan decided to bring their dealership to the online audience through a custom YouTube Channel experience.

And for people on the go using smartphones for research, they also created a first of its kind custom mobile YouTube Channel, where they replicated the desktop experience for smaller screens.

As a result Nissan is said to have received an extremely positive response, along with a significant increase in people looking for their dealership after researching.

When a channel becomes product UI

What makes this interesting is not that Nissan published more videos. It is that the channel itself is treated like product UI. Instead of forcing viewers to hunt through a generic grid, the experience is designed to guide shopper intent from model discovery to feature deep-dives, then onward to the next step in the buying journey.

A “virtual showroom” in this sense is a structured video experience that lets a buyer explore models, features, and trims in a self-directed way, without sales pressure, and without leaving the environment where they are already doing research.

In automotive marketing, the research screen becomes the showroom. So the channel needs to behave like a product experience, not a playlist.

Why it lands with real car-shopping behavior

The psychology is simple. When someone is researching a car, they want control. They want to compare, replay, and go deep only on the features they care about. A channel-built showroom supports that viewer control, and it keeps momentum high because the buyer never has to “leave to learn” and then try to find their way back.

This is also why the mobile extension matters. In the moments where you spot a car on the street, see an ad, or get a recommendation from a friend, you can immediately jump into a structured product view rather than starting from scratch with a search query.

Business intent: turn video curiosity into dealer intent

Nissan is said to have received an extremely positive response, along with a significant increase in people looking for their dealership after researching. The strategic bet is clear. If you can keep the research experience coherent and confidence-building, you increase the odds that the next action is dealership search, a test drive, or a shortlist decision, rather than another brand’s video.

What to steal for your next “research-first” launch

  • Design the navigation, not just the content. The way viewers move matters as much as the videos themselves.
  • Map content to buyer questions. Make it easy to jump from overview to the exact feature proof someone is hunting for.
  • Keep parity across devices. If your audience researches on mobile, do not treat mobile as a scaled-down afterthought.
  • Build a clean handoff to the next step. The experience should naturally lead into dealer discovery, test drive intent, or model comparison.

A few fast answers before you act

What is a “virtual showroom” on a brand channel?

A virtual showroom is a structured video experience that helps shoppers explore products like they would in-store, with clear pathways from model overview to feature details, without relying on a salesperson or a separate site.

Why build the showroom inside a video platform experience?

Because that is where research attention already lives. Keeping the experience native reduces friction, preserves intent, and lets buyers move from curiosity to confidence without context-switching.

What makes a mobile virtual showroom different from “mobile video”?

It is not just playback on a phone. It is an interface designed for mobile decision-making, where browsing, comparing, and drilling into details still feels coherent on a smaller screen.

How does this drive dealership outcomes without being pushy?

By making the buyer feel informed and in control. When research is easy and confidence increases, dealer search and test drive intent tend to follow naturally as the next step.

What content do you need for this to work?

You need a library that covers the full set of buyer questions. Walk-throughs, feature explainers, comparisons, and proof points that can be consumed in any order depending on what the shopper cares about.

How do you measure whether it worked?

Track signals that reflect progression in the funnel, such as deeper feature engagement, repeat visits, branded search lift, and increases in dealer-locator usage or dealership queries following content exposure.