It is a usual morning when you force yourself to get up from bed, and walk towards your balcony to pick up your daily newspaper. This morning, the moment you look at your newspaper, your eyes go wide open. Why …?? The entire newspaper is of hard silver paper!! The front page reads – “Time for Volkswagen”…
Welcome to the world of Innovative branding, and this time it comes from one of the world’s leading and most innovative brands- VW.
VW has been known to be a trendsetter in innovative marketing. Last year too, Volkswagen came out with an astounding campaign –the “talking newspaper”. The newspaper was embedded with a chip which made it talk to its readers. It advertised the VW Vento in a grand way and created ripples in the market.
Volkswagen India was also the first automobile brand to have Company Page on LinkedIn. As per LinkedIn, there were more than 2700 VW fans who recommended VW cars as their favorite car model to their professional network in just 4 weeks….Another brilliant approach to reach out to their customers on a professional platform!
The brand has hit the bull’s eye once again and this time it’s the new campaign for its sedan – JETTA. This new campaign is a prime example of how a brand keeps innovating itself with new marketing and advertisement strategies. Let us delve deeper and have a closer look …
This new campaign of VW is a 360 degree campaign aimed at the customers, unveiled just before the festival season hits India. One may wonder, what exactly is a 360 degree campaign….? As imperative by its name, it is nothing but exposing the target group to your brand through all the mediums. 360 degree campaigns include simultaneous advertisement on television, print media, outdoor media, social networking and so on. One of the most compelling ways of advertising, a 360 degree campaign makes it unavoidable for your customer to miss your brand. Everywhere the customer looks, he looks at your brand.
But how do you create a 360 degree campaign and be innovative at the same time?? VW came up with the perfect answer!
Print media
The newspaper advertisement for the new VW Jetta was afour page advertisement on silver glossy paper. An instant attention grabber, VW made sure it made its presence felt in a grand way! Being catchy being one of the foremost rules of a successful advertisement campaign, VW certainly deserves to be applauded for their innovative print ad.
Television Commercial
The “Flyboy” TVC for VW has been handled by DDB Mudra. As you would have seen it showcases a young hero with wings, doing heroic deeds. But even the “Hero with wings” decides to forgo his wings and his stature of a hero for the pleasure of driving a Jetta. The message comes out clear – “Even the flyboy hero would do anything to drive a Jetta.”
Anything for Jetta
The first thing we have here is the website – http://www.anything4jetta.com/. A well laid out website and totally product (Jetta) centric. It asks the visitors to log in to their twitter accounts and tweet on what they would do to get their hands on a Jetta. The tweet has to go with the hashtag #anything4jetta. The answers have to be whacky and clever. The best tweet gets the grand prize – what else, but the VW Jetta itself. The website also asks for SMS tweets, voice messages and uploads videos showcasing what all you are willing to do for the new Jetta.
The social media campaign is being handled by Grey Digital. The response has been astounding so far. Over 50,000 tweet in first three days and over 100,000 views on the website. The hashtag also featured on trends on twitter. The numbers show that this social media campaign has been widely successful in creating the buzz.
We clearly see that VW has yet again surpassed its own benchmarks of innovation. An attention grabbing or we should say “compelled to get noticed advertisement in print media” to the crisp television commercial to the fantastic social media campaign; True to the legacy of the brand, VW has yet again managed to catch its customers by surprise. All the three campaigns have been surprisingly innovative and is sure to be in the minds the customers for quite some time.
But, of all the three, the social media campaign is sure to help VW in the long run. It has resulted in building a very good foundation in the form of followers on twitter and likes on Facebook which would provide a great base to reach out to the audience during the next campaign. And needless to say the timing has been perfect too. Just before the festive season; so it can garner more response by getting into the consideration of prospective car buyers.
A truly Innovative Branding example from a truly innovative brand!
[ The article has been written by Amandeep Singh and Anindita Sharma . They both completed their MBA specializing in Marketing in the year 2010 from IFMR, Chennai . ]
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