Emvies 2010: Volkswagen's grand entry; Nokia's reality stunt

In the category Best Media Strategy - Consumer Durables, media agencies Mediacom and Maxus presented cases on their work for Volkswagen and Nokia, respectively

There were only two shortlists in the category, Best Media Strategy - Consumer Durables, namely Mediacom and Maxus. Mediacom presented a case on how it helped brand Volkswagen to 'Drive top-gear to India'; while Maxus spoke about how it took brand Nokia from 'Zero to one million' sans TVCs.

Driving top-gear to India

Emvies 2010: Volkswagen's grand entry; Nokia's reality stunt

For Volkswagen's launch in India, the biggest challenge was to enter a market dominated by auto biggies such as Maruti, Hyundai and Tata for the masses; and BMW and Mercedes for the classes. Moreover, total ad spends in the auto industry were over Rs 250-300 crore at the time; ad-ex, as they say, was on overdrive.

The objective of the campaign and media plan was to make the brand as visible and as 'top of mind' as possible for the TG.

In print, the brand went the roadblock way by being the sole advertiser on 28 pages of the Times of India; it enjoyed 15,000 sq. cm of ad space. In addition, for the first time, the country saw aerial advertising in the form of 10,000 sq ft banners that were flown over key cities.

As a result of this aggressive effort, Volkswagen achieved its annual sales target in just three months. The print ads were recalled by 50 per cent of the readers and awareness about the brand rose from 13 per cent to 63 per cent. This, apparently, was more than that for Hyundai and Tata, and at par with Maruti Suzuki.

Nokia's Zero TVC Approach

In the case of Nokia, the prime challenge was competition from Samsung and Sony Ericsson; because when it came to brand preference, Nokia floundered. Also, the brand's music phones suffered due to the perception that the phone's speakers were of low quality.

The brand rose to this challenge with the launch of the Nokia 5130. The two main TGs were image seekers and style followers; the core consumer insight was 'seeing is believing'. Thus, the focus was on demonstrations. The theme of the campaign and media plan was to connect the head, heart and hand.

Shunning the TVC route altogether, the brand was promoted across seven properties, in seven languages on seven different TV networks (including regional). On these TV channels, the participants of popular reality shows and competitions were shown using the Nokia 5130 during their practice sessions. In all, there were 70 endorsements and 70 content integrations on these shows.

Since these were voting-based shows, the reach was massive. One million units of the Nokia 5130 were sold and 300 GRPs were delivered, both in the first month of the launch. In all, 800 GRPs were garnered.

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