The “Falcon Hunt” TV commercial proved to be a smashing success, not only in the Arabian Gulf markets but more so in Australia. This convinced the Japanese that the Middle East was another good option for their TVC production, which had been traditionally restricted to Japan, with only the US an exception.
By the autumn of 1981, Yutuka Katayama[1], the first president of Nissan Motor Corporation USA, felt that the company would be making a grave mistake if it continued to sell some of its most popular models, such as the Fair lady 240Z, under the Datsun badge. Katayama-san felt that the name Nissan should be imprinted on all their cars, instead of selecting ones. In his mind, he was keen to promote a sense of corporate globalization and to be as recognized as Toyota and Honda. Accordingly, the company operated under the name of Nissan, ceased to use the name Datsun altogether.
According to The New York Times[2], the change should have easily added $50 million to Nissan as usual US promotional budget, bringing it up to $200 million. On top of that came the advertising, which meant changing the selling line from “Datsun we are driven” to “The name is Nissan”.
For the 1,100 US dealers, the name change meant new signage at the cost of $30 million, in addition to legal fees, stationery and catalogues. The name change had to be rolled out globally, but it was soon realized that the US advertising campaign would not work in other markets. So, Nissan conducted a global review to see what its options were. This led it to call Intermarkets Kuwait, as it was very impressed with the Patrol experience and its success.
By that time, Mustapha Jaafar had resigned and had been replaced by an English executive creative director called Chris Churchill, who was in his late forties and had previously worked as a publicist for The Beatles. Chris had accompanied John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison on their first American tour.
The Datsun name change assignment was the kind of project that Chris loved. It took him months of preparation as he had two scale models of the 260Z manufactured. Then, when he was finally ready to film, he was accompanied by Norio Osawa and Youssef Habbab to the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) in Farnborough, England.
Churchill planned to shoot the main scene in a wind tunnel. The RAE had three such wind tunnels and one of these was used to film this scene. The film showed the 260Z driving at high speed with a Datsun flag flying at its side. Gradually, the Datsun flag morphs into a glowing Nissan flag. Chris hired John Mills to record the English voiceover when Mills was still acting in ITV’s “Quatermass”. The Arabic voiceover was recorded by Ahmad Shamas.
This production raised the reputation of Intermarkets to an international level and brought the agency more money than it had ever made on any previous TV production. The commercial not only ran in the Middle East, but in all markets where Datsun had previously sold, outside the US. The name change campaign lasted from 1982 to 1984 at a cost of more than $780,000 globally.