Volkswagen: Too difficult to let go

After talking newspapers, it is now crying billboards for Volkswagen. The brand recently came out with a television commercial for its entry level sedan, Vento, which is positioned as a car created out of pure passion. Based on this insight, the German car maker rolled out an out of home (OOH) campaign which shows an engineer crying on the billboard and another cleaning the window of the car - on the hoarding.

Called the Tears of Perfection, the OOH campaign extends the idea of the TVC. It shows an engineer crying as the car is driven away. The campaign has two versions: one where the innovation has water - in the form tears - rolling out of the eyes of the engineer on a billboard. The water droplets fall into the two buckets placed on a mobile van, which holds the billboard. The second one has the same crying engineer, with tears illuminated in the form of LED, which again fall in the bucket placed at the bottom of the display.

"The idea for this campaign was based upon high impact strategy to establish the proposition and innovative execution to draw the attention of the customer," says Lutz Kothe, head, marketing and public relations, Volkswagen Passenger Cars, Volkswagen Group Sales India.

The campaign, which is designed by Portland, the OOH arm of Kinetic India, is based on the insight that 'the Vento has been made with so much passion that it is hard to let this car go', which is the same as the television commercial. The creative agency for the campaign is DDB Mudra.

The eye catching innovations are also done on bus queue shelters, called lenticulars. In these, two creatives are placed adjacent to each other, of which one has the crying engineer standing, while the other shows the car being driven away. This appears to be in motion.

Portland has used properties such as LED screens, mobile vans, bridge panels and regular billboards.

The company has launched a 21 day outdoor campaign in 41 cities including the metros and key mini-metros across the country.

The innovations were carried out in Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru and Ahmedabad, while the overall campaign has been executed in all metros and key mini metros.

"It is very important that interested customers should have the proximity to visit a Volkswagen showroom to test drive the car. Therefore, presence of dealerships was of prime importance while choosing the cities or towns," says Kothe about the choice of the cities for the campaign.

After a much talked about print campaign where the creative agency, DDB Mudra, gave the newspaper a voice, the OOH campaign takes forward the message of how the car has been crafted with much passion, supporting the current TVC.