We sat down with Donatella Cavallari, Intergea Group’s enthusiastic Marketing and Communications Manager based in Turin, the historical headquarters of Fiat in northern Italy.
When asked what she loves the most about her role, she says it’s the dynamism. “If you’re a doctor or a scientist, two plus two usually equals four, but not in marketing. You have to think creatively, and you’re constantly searching for the best solution to achieve your goal.”
Having first started her career in automotive at Stellantis, Donatella now manages the marketing for two of Intergea Group’s holding companies, Theorema and Logica. Their 500+ fleet of vehicles include 14 different brands, such as Fiat, Citroën, and a new electric vehicle (EV) player from China, BYD.
Curious about the sales and overall interest of EVs in Italy, Donatella responds that Italians have been skeptical, however, things are changing with more information and availability of charging points. "In fact, EVs now make up 2% of Italy’s automotive market and it’s growing each quarter."
Why Phyron?
Before Phyron, Donatella already identified video as a crucial part in her marketing strategy.
“We were producing videos one-by-one manually but it was too expensive in terms of cost and time spent. This is why I wanted to implement Phyron.”
She continues, “Phyron allows us to easily produce videos for our top-of-funnel campaigns for our Automotive Inventory Ads (AIA) on Meta. This frees up the time of our video production team, allowing them to focus on producing other types of video content, like customer testimonials.”
Solution
By signing up to Phyron’s Inventory Video and Paid Ads solutions, Donatella's ad-content creation and publication workflow is fully automated.
Inventory Videos
With zero manual work involved, Phyron’s API automatically fetches Theorema and Logica’s existing car inventory data, consisting of their images and car specifications. Phyron AI then transforms it into fully branded, dynamic videos in 4 formats for 18+ placements.
Paid Ads
With Phyron's Paid Ads solution, Donatella's ads are automatically published and updated across Meta (Reels, Watch and Stories) in real time. She's also able to fully leverage Meta's new Product Level Video (PLV), which was introduced in January 2024.
In a nutshell, PLV is an extension of Meta's Automotive Inventory Ads (AIA). It allows sellers to advertise their entire car catalogue on a Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) or Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) level. The main difference is that advertisers can now scale their ads with engaging videos, rather than only static images.
Combined with Meta’s vast userbase and smart targeting functionality, car buyers are targeted based on their interests, online behaviour and geographic location. For automotive retailers, running catalogue ads on Meta is a no-brainer: you can scale your ads effortlessly, and reach even more digital buyers as the platform hosts over 3.5 billion people.
Results: More leads, time and cost savings
76% more leads with Phyron AI video
“For our used vehicles, implementing Phyron AI video was a complete game changer.” Sharing her screen, Donatella shows us the results of her catalogue ads on Meta for the last 51 days.
“For an accurate analysis, I set up two ad sets for our AIA campaign on Meta. It’s like an A/B test, with the same budget, except one ad set includes Phyron videos and images, and the other has only images.”
The figure below shows the ad set with Phyron video, which had been added on May 1st.
Compared with the image-only ad set below, there’s a clear winner in terms of performance.
By comparing two ad sets over a 51-day period—one featuring Phyron AI videos and the other using only images—Donatella observed a remarkable 76% increase in Facebook leads and a 22% decrease in Cost Per Lead (CPL) for her video ads. Conversely, the image-only ads saw a 5.3% decrease in leads and a 21% increase in CPL.
These results represent the effectiveness of video content in engaging audiences and growing conversions. Moreover, it’s a testament to the power of automation, which has allowed Donatella and her team to scale their video production effortlessly and be among the first to successfully implement Meta’s new PLV ads.
Time and cost savings
With over 8 showrooms and 500+ used vehicles, capturing consistent, uniform content has been a challenge for Intergea Group. Donatella claims that around 70% of the used cars were photographed using a smartphone.
“The entire process was very manual. I have a video producer and several members of my team that are involved in capturing images and video, as well as carrying out post-production activities,” according to Donatella.
Automating the creation of her top-of-funnel videos has freed up time for her and her team to focus on other activities, like producing customer testimonial videos for the later stages of the customer journey.
Donatella says, “being able to use Phyron’s AI and automation has allowed us to save over 90% of our time in content production and cut costs by 80%.”
Looking Ahead
This case study highlights the transformative impact of AI-driven video content for Intergea Group’s marketing efforts. By integrating Phyron AI video into their Meta catalogue ads, they achieved a significant boost in lead generation and cost efficiency, with a 76% increase in Facebook leads and a 22% reduction in Cost Per Lead (CPL).
Additionally, automating video production with Phyron has led to a huge amount of time and cost savings. Our AI and automation cut their content production time by 90% and reduced costs by 80%, allowing their marketing team to focus on more strategic initiatives.
To summarise her experience, Donatella says, “We’re very impressed with the results we’ve achieved through Phyron. So much so that I have communicated our impressive results with other marketers at Intergea Group’s holding companies and encouraged them to sign on, too.”
