MEDIA PLAN OF VOLKSWAGEN
Mediacom Communications, which manages the media planning operations for Volkswagen
Advertisement of the MNC automobile brand was through television, print media, outdoor media, social networking and so on. Sharp positioning in addition to innovation has elevated Volkswagen’s brand awareness of eight per cent in 2009 to 44 per cent in 2011. Various ad campaigns of VW are: print campaigns including the first roadblock, the talking newspaper, the Polo hole, painting the newspapers blue for Think Blue or the Silver Jacket for Jetta. The talking newspaper was the star in all of these campaigns.
INNOVATIVE TV COMMERCIALS:
As part of the campaign, an interesting TVC (TV Commercial) was launched which soon caught the attention of the public, portraying Volkswagen engineers and designers putting a lot of effort into building a Vento, pampering it at every stage and breaking down into tears as the car finally leaves the factory.
A complimentary TVC named ‘Flyboy’ was advertised, which portrayed a young hero with wings, doing heroic needs, deciding to forgo his wings and stature as a hero to enjoy the thrill of driving a Jetta.
INNOVATIVE NEWSPAPER ADS
Times of India and Volkswagen (Print): Volkswagen tied up with Times of India to make a Volkswagen edition on 11th November 2009. Advertisements of Volkswagen brands such as Beetle, Jetta and others dominated the complete newspaper from cover to cover for the day. The front page had a Volkswagen cutout in the form of a car. As per industry estimates, Volkswagen spent around Rs. 100 million for the one-day roadblock.

On the 21st of September 2010, readers of ‘Times of India’ in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Pune and Chennai were taken by surprise when their newspapers ‘talked’ to them about the Vento. This first ever advertising campaign of its kind in the world was achieved using an i-pod sized device embedded with a chip, a speaker and batteries to last for 140 minutes, attached to the newspaper
Volkswagen came up with the ‘silver jacket’ advertising for the Volkswagen Jetta sedan. On the 29th of August 2011, readers of ‘Times of India’ in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi and Bangalore, while the readers of ‘The Hindu’ in Chennai were welcomed in the morning by their newspapers which had a silver jacket (false cover) thicker and larger than the newspaper, thereby intending to represent the quality and glitzy look of the car. The silver jacket also carried a feature which extensively promoted the Jetta.

SOCIAL MEDIA AD CAMPAIGN
The social media campaign involved a website named ‘anything4jetta’ in which users login using their twitter account and tweet about the unusual things they are ready to do, to get their hands on a Jetta.

Let us take up three of these campaigns run by Volkswagen, see what was done and how effective they turned out to be:
1. The first-ever print road-block
A major newspaper roadblock had been unheard of in India, although TV roadblocks were gaining popularity (HUL, Vodafone etc). Volkswagen captured the entire TOI on November 11, 2009, with all the slots advertising one or the other of its Car brands – Jetta, Passat, Touareg. As per sources (on the web), VW spent close to Rs 8 Cr on this campaign. Obviously, capturing entire TOI editions advertising for a day can’t come cheap!
2. The first-ever talking newspaper
The readers of TOI and The Hindu in Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Pune and Chennai were in for a surprise on 21st September, 2010. As soon as the opened their favorite newspaper to read, they heard a mini-sized, pressure-activated device play a recorded message about the Volkswagen Vento. Reportedly, VW spent around Rs 5 Cr on this.
3. The first-ever glossy newspaper front page
And on 29th August, they unveiled the glossy, super-shining silver coloured TOI frontpage which carried a full-size poster of the All New Volkswagen Jetta. Find below a picture of the same
While these are not the only advertisements VW has launched (they have launched several other, more innocuous advertisements, both on TV and print), these certainly were the ones which were meant to be attention-grabbers. These were the ones to create huge whiz bangs, and boy, they did it in style.
But, refreshingly, the people over at VW have put the ‘flood of dollars’ at their beck and call to good use. While they have spent in oodles, they have achieved the objective that they set out to meet – grab attention to brand Volkswagen, and make it stand out in a horde of auto players – Maruti, Hyundai, Honda, Fiat, Skoda, Chevrolet etc. They have been able to create a strong brand recall through the campaigns, and people do know the name clearly now. This was what they wanted to get – stand out amongst the crowd – and they got it done in huge flash bangs of advertising!