When driving a car for any length of time, you become sensitive to its appearances around you – either in real life or in the media – and it struck me recently that I hadn’t seen an ad for the Qashqai for a while.

I Googled ‘Nissan Qashqai adverts’ and there was nothing UK-based in terms of video advertising, paid ads from Bristol Street Motors, linking to its new car deals page and Nissan GB to an online test-drive booking form.

Then I moved to Facebook. Nissan GB is currently focused on the 2019 Juke, but there is an occasional post about the Micra, the X-Trail winning The Sunday Times award for dog-friendly car of the year, and even the Navara. Among these was one, rather cryptic, Qashqai post, ‘Why turn when you can click?’, promoting the ProPilot safety features.

The response to that post, however, is telling. In a little more than two weeks, there were 73 comments and four shares, the majority extremely positive (“Great cars, brilliant engines”). And Nissan GB responded to all comments, good and bad.

There are also two Nissan Qashqai owners’ pages on Facebook. One is private, the other has owner pictures and mostly comments along the lines of ‘love it’. And noting that this page has 39,861 likes and more than 40,000 following it, my issue with the lack of overt advertising is put in its place, by the power of owner-generated, free, marketing. Vive la difference.