The Campaign

Our campaign was driven by a key insight into the automotive consumer journey in Singapore – where there is no rational need for a car, the trigger to automotive purchase would have to be an emotion. We explored this further and identified 4 key emotional states that were serving as triggers to this “Emotive Automotive” consumer journey. Desire: To escape the crowd using public transport daily, and trigger a want for their own automobiles. Frustration: Targeted users outside their vehicles, frustrated through waiting at the car wash, gas and service centers. In those moments, our ads trigger their want for alternatives. Aspiration: 45% of consumers intending to purchase in the next 6-months* noted the opinions of their co-workers, workplace was a key location for targeting. Reflective: Geo-fenced Volkswagen’s competitor when consumer reflects on a large purchase. This period of interception was critical in driving consumers to expand their considerations.

Creative Execution

With advanced digital analytics, we were able to track and attribute footfall to messages that had been delivered by our campaign. With the goal of increasing footfall, our partner created a command centre and optimized the campaign by the performance of each mapped out “emotional hotspot” to whether that was driving footfall to the store. This allowed us to glean some incredibly detailed insights that allowed improved targeting. For example, we prioritized delivery to the Toyota Dealership on Leng Kee Road as it was giving us high engagement rates (Reflection), and increased budget to the OCBC building (“Aspiration”) as it was delivering high footfall. In all, we cut 1,600 locations from our campaign and prioritized 500 that were high value locations in driving engagement and footfall. Heatmaps informed Volkswagen where they could leverage other OOH, television and radio campaigns to further enhance our campaign specifically, and their brand in general.

Volkswagen successfully leveraged emotions paired with location data to speak with consumers at exactly the right time. This resulted in consumers engaging with Volkswagen over their competitors delivering CTR’s of 0.68% - 3.5 times higher than industry benchmarks. Footfall reporting showed how this digital campaign drove quantifiable bodies to the Volkswagen dealership. We could also optimise towards this metric increasing our Footfall Through Rate (FTR) from 0.08% to 0.61% over the course of the campaign period. As a result, 450 of the 900 monthly walk-ins could be attributed to our campaign. Before our campaign, Volkswagen averaged 32 cars sold per week. Now Volkswagen is selling an average of 50 cars per week (+56% increase), and our campaign delivered an ROI of 1,000x – incredible results in the toughest country to sell a car!

Selling cars is tough in Singapore. The government limits total cars sold each year (28,000), resulting in a battle royale,for a piece of this tiny (but expensive) car pie. Public transportation delivers on the promise of door-to-door journeys, there is little rational need to buy a car. In this context, we drove unprecedented footfall and increased Volkswagen sales by 56%. We achieved this by bringing our core insight to life with the smart use of media. Our insight – automotive purchase journey is triggered by emotion, drove us to identify emotional trigger hotspots and convert them into addressable media opportunities.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Working with data providers, and our understanding of the Singaporean mindset, we mapped out where these emotional triggers were most likely to happen. This gave us an emotional map of Singapore. We then utilized the ubiquitous mobile phone to deliver customized and targeted messages, at the point where they were likely to have an emotive automotive trigger. Delivering a Volkswagen message into the start of every potential consumer journey. Our messages would be delivered at the following locations that had been mapped by emotion: Desire: Bus stops, taxi stands, subway stations Frustration: Car washes, service centres and gas stations Aspiration: Business and corporate offices such as OCBC Tower, Suntec, Microsoft and Cisco companies, and affluent residential locations such as Orchard/Paragon, River Valley and private country clubs Reflective: Automotive competitor dealerships such as Tan Chong Motor Sales, Audi Centre, Toyota, Mazda and Hyundai dealerships.