Brief Explanation

Volkswagen Group Australia and DDB Sydney have launched a multi-channel campaign showcasing the extensive range of models in their Australian portfolio. The new campaign - 'Welcome to the Family' - tells the story of an extended family arriving to celebrate a traditional family get together. The launch of the campaign coincides with Volkswagen celebrating 60 years of being in Australia.

Creative Execution

The commercial was based on the idea of family. The genes of the VW family of vehicles are unmistakable and this is where the campaign’s idea began. We wanted to reflect this idea with a real (human) family, so we created a large, three generation family that had grown up in the country. We staged our story at at the old family homestead, where Nana is celebrating her birthday. The party brings all the extended family together and they arrive from far and wide in their VW’s of course. Like the diversity across the range of VW’s, it’s often the differences within a family that make it interesting. So we began by developing each character around the VW they drove - their VW being an extension of their personality. Then we developed comprehensive back-stories, and from these, built relationships between the characters. We even developed a family tree that included the in-laws and family pets. So as casting commenced, we knew the characters intimately and during the process, the family really came to life. In fact, after a day of shooting, the actors had completely inhabited their characters and the event took on a life of it’s own (even though many of the cast were non-actors). This was the plan of course and the shoot was more akin to documenting a real event (a little bit Dogma). The result was extraordinary and validated all our work in character development/casting during preproduction.