WIRED FOR THE HOLIDAYS

It was no coincidence that the first thing guests saw at last week’s WIRED magazine's Wish List Gadget Lab party in San Francisco as they arrived was a wireframe version of our all‑new Range Rover Evoque, writes Finbar McFall, Vice President of Marketing for Land Rover North America.

We’d built five of these full‑size wireframe models of the new Range Rover Evoque for the Los Angeles auto show. To have one of them at the WIRED event was certainly a great way to get people talking about the car.

The event, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, was held to unveil some of the coolest high‑tech gadgets for the holiday season. We’d been invited to bring along our all‑new 2012 Range Rover Evoque 5‑door, fresh from its global debut at last month’s Los Angeles auto show.

This was a truly unique opportunity for us to showcase the new Range Rover Evoque to some of the most tech‑savvy opinion‑formers and influencers in the country, and get their feedback on our ground‑breaking new compact Range Rover.

These were young, smart, affluent San Franciscans who tend to put great emphasis on sustainability and innovation, and who’d probably never considered a Range Rover product before. In other words, our perfect target audience for the Range Rover Evoque.

I’m delighted to say our new compact Range Rover was a real hit with the crowd. A number of guests came up and told me “I want that car, tell me about it.” Usually it’s the other way around.

They wanted to hear about its 2.0‑liter direct‑injection four‑cylinder turbo engine that will be the most fuel efficient Range Rover ever built but will still accelerate from 0‑60mph in 7.1 seconds – amazingly the same time as our 2009 model year Range Rover Sport Supercharged V8.

They wanted to hear about its intelligent use of lightweight and sustainable materials; like the plastic front fenders and rear tailgate, the aluminum hood and the metal trim in the cabin that is made from 95% recycled aluminum.

Being a tech crowd, of course they wanted to hear the 825‑watt, 17‑speaker Meridian audio system we’ll be offering with the car.

But certainly the strongest feedback we got was for the Range Rover Evoque’s bold, concept car design. All night long, we had people coming up and taking photos of the car, taking photos of their friends with the car, taking photos of themselves with the car.

And in the social media world we now live in, we know that so many of those images will end up posted on Facebook or Twitter or as email attachments. For us, that is just an amazing way of spreading the word. For every one person on Facebook, they’ll have 100, 200 maybe 300 friends. Suddenly a camera phone photo taken at the WIRED party is being seen by thousands of people.

While none of the WIRED crowd will be able to get a hold of a new Range Rover Evoque in time for this holiday season – it goes on sale next fall – we’re hoping they’ll put it on their wish list for 2011.

Happy Holidays.