Title | A CUT ABOVE THE REST |
Brand | VOLKSWAGEN |
Product / Service | VOLKSWAGEN POLO |
Category | A02. Best Use of Magazines/Newspapers |
Entrant | MEDIACOM COMMUNICATIONS INDIA Mumbai, INDIA |
Entrant Company: | MEDIACOM COMMUNICATIONS INDIA Mumbai, INDIA |
Media Agency: | MEDIACOM COMMUNICATIONS INDIA Mumbai, INDIA |
Credits |
Name | Company | Position |
---|---|---|
Ashwini Kamat | Mediacom India | General Manager |
Girish Vyas | Mediacom India | Investment Director |
Deepa Jatkar | Mediacom India | Senior Business Director |
Yogesh Pawar | Mediacom India | Business Group Head |
Padamaraj Krishnakutty | Mediacom India | Implementation Head |
Sridhar Survey | Mediacom India | Implementation Manager |
Zarius Captain | Mediacom India | Business Manager |
• 8th March 2010; Volkswagen Polo showed a huge spike in India Google Trends (Source: Google). • Huge PR value with leading media DISCUSSING the innovation; was the most talked about topic. • 37% sales target was achieved through this innovation (regular multimedia campaign was aired a month later).
Our solution was something that would be impossible for consumers to miss. Their newspaper with a hole! We got India’s largest newspaper The Times of India (TOI) with 6.8Mn readers to punch a hole right through the newspaper in the shape of the Polo. There was no way a reader could miss this. The entire operation of manually cutting the hole using a die-cut across 2.7mn copies of TOI was a logistical nightmare. But the ensuing impact was phenomenal.
Volkswagen, a relatively unknown brand in India with 13% awareness was launching a small car ‘Polo’. Polo competed with big boys like Hyundai, Tata, Maruti,... all with TOM in excess of 80%. To deliver an aggressive sales target, Volkswagen needed quick saliency & high buzz around the brand. There are atleast 6 aggressive car launches in India every year. Full-page & half page ads were the category norm. Every day, newspapers carried atleast 3-4 car ads. For Polo, the challenge was to stand apart, be noticed & grab mind-space quickly with the consumer.