Social and Influencer > Online Video

BERYL

DDB, Sydney / VOLKSWAGEN / 2016

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Overview

Credits

OVERVIEW

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This was an idea that was destined to fail. Intentionally, so.

It was called The Tough Sell, a fictional, episodic series that followed Tom, a Volkswagen representative from the city tasked with moving to the outback to sell the ultimate city car – the Golf. He journeyed to the real town of Blinman in South Australia (population 21), where he tried to impress the locals with the Golf’s innovative features.

In each episode Tom tries (and fails) to win favour with Blinman’s locals as he demonstrates the innovative features in completely inappropriate landscapes – testing the City Emergency Brake in a town with no traffic, or the rain sensing wipers in a region that hasn’t seen rain in months.

Not only did the series structure of the Tough Sell give us a classic fish out of water story, it also gave us an elegant platform to showcase the car’s features.

Execution

Our approach was to create a content pod system. Each pod included our feature “Tough Sell” episode, which carried the story forward, supported by ten other assets – stills, gifs, short films – intended to work together over a five-week period.

We made five pods to give us six months of content – but crucially it was one story.

The story itself was told almost exclusively through the Facebook video platform, which meant we weren’t restricted by standard advertising formats and could simply focus on telling the best story possible.

Each content pod gives us the chance to show different sides of the story and highlight funny moments, to create additional, non-linear narratives where the audience might see their favourite scene again because the Facebook feed algorithm serves it back to them because they have shared or liked it.

Outcome

As a result of The Tough Sell:

- 14% increase in visits to the website.

- 23% lift in people booking a Golf test-drive online.

- Greatest increase in consideration for the Golf ever.

- The most successful automotive Facebook campaign ever in Australia.

- Consideration for the Golf hit an all-time high of 18.2% nationally.

- Brand attributes like ‘Valuable’ and ‘High Resale Value’ were up 16 and 24 points respectively.

- ‘Innovative’ as a model attribute for Golf more than doubled, up 36 points.

- A 5-point increase in favourability for the Volkswagen brand in the business-critical demographic of Men aged 25 to 34.

- Facebook research reported a 2-point increase in consideration throughout the campaign, which is significantly higher than the Facebook global norm.

- Recall of the Golf’s technological features increased 6 points over the course of the campaign.

Strategy

The rise of Netflix has fundamentally changed our content appetites. We don’t watch TV. Instead, we flick through Facebook with Netflix streaming in the background. So we challenged ourselves to deliver greater business impact for Volkswagen by reimagining the nature of a broadcast campaign online; we wanted to create a new shape for the most popular video platform in Australia.

Facebook was to be our broadcast channel, but we didn’t need Facebook ads. We needed to earn an audience, fit in with their current behaviour and complement the platform. And we also needed a story that would last six months.

Through the engagement of our individual episodes on Facebook, we then drove viewers to take a closer look at the Golf on our campaign hub. Here, they could see more of the series and book a test drive.

Synopsis

The Golf is a key part of Volkswagen in Australia, making up the majority of our sales. It’s critical we support it to maintain our share. However, every dollar we spend supporting Golf is a dollar we can’t spend claiming a share of growing categories like SUVs. We needed a way to support Golf that was as effective as TV, but more efficient.

Our strategy? Turn a traditional, four-week TV burst into a six-month cyber content campaign on Facebook. First and foremost it would have to be engaging and entertaining. But it would also have to communicate the fact that the new Golf was full of advanced technological features – a deciding factor in the minds of possible buyers.

Our objective was to raise the consideration of the golf, boost awareness about the new model’s features and deliver leads and test-drives to dealers.

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