Peugeot

About the client

Peugeot is an internationally renowned French automotive brand with an image historically associated with French elegance, design excellence and engineering quality. In the Baltic markets, the brand faced a challenge – how to differentiate itself from competitors focused on technical features and price points, and bring to life more lifestyle and emotion.

The challenge

The Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian car markets are small, highly competitive and price-sensitive. The Baltic market often adapts global campaigns designed to fit everywhere and developed with a focus on large countries. In the Baltics, such content often does not resonate emotionally with the local target audience (different nature, lifestyle, people, culture).

Peugeot wanted a new social media strategy and content creation:

• Link the brand’s French design and lifestyle to the local context.
• Differentiate yourself from competitors through local content creation on social media and influencer marketing.
• Increase overall brand awareness and engagement through social media.

Strategy

Realist developed an integrated social media strategy based on authentic local content and cultural relevance. The aim was to show the Peugeot not just as a car, but as a fragment of French flair in the everyday life of the local audience.

Key strategic steps:

• Content localisation in all three Baltic countries – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Monthly content planning and production according to a developed strategy.
  
• Collaborations with local influencers who embody the essence of French aesthetics and lifestyle, such as the Latvian campaign in collaboration with fashion editor and influencer Dace Bahmane, whose visual world and personality linked the brand to elegance, fashion and modernity. In Estonia, instead of an influencer, we collaborated with La Boulangerie, a café serving pastries worthy of Parisian flavours in the heart of Tallinn.
  
• The focus shifted from rational advertising to an emotional narrative – the car as part of a lifestyle, not just a product.

What we did

We managed Peugeot’s social media in the Baltics according to the strategy we developed at the beginning of our cooperation. In terms of monthly social media, we managed monthly content calendars and ad campaigns for Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram), photo and video production, paid ad setup and optimisation, influencer collaborations.

Results

The results showed that it was the local and authentic content that created a strong emotional connection with the target audience:

• Engagement of posts with local content increased by 79% compared to posts with global content.
  
• The number of interactions when promoting posts by content creators increased by 252.8%.
  
• As global content was also posted, there was a big jump in the results for locally produced content in terms of both reach and engagement numbers, even though the budget was the same.
  
• The campaign brought a new quality dimension to Peugeot’s brand communication in the Baltics and showed that copying global campaigns is not the key to success – local context matters.

Key takeaways

• Local adaptation is key – a universal message may not be most effective in every market.
  
• Emotion sells better than function, especially in segments where lifestyle and values influence decisions.
  
• In a small market, collaboration between influencers can deliver many times better results than traditional advertising.
  
• Testing and localisation (A/B tests, language versions, target audiences) should be an integral part of any international campaign.