Category: Best non-fiction program, series or film where a client has successfully created a reality, documentary or light entertainment show around a product(s) or brand(s)
Advertiser: VOLKSWAGEN
Product/Service: VW AMAROK
Agency: MEDIACOM
Executive Creative Director: Gemma Newland (Mediacom)
Head Of Production: Alistair Ferrier (Mediacom)
Account Director: Louise Willmott (Mediacom)
Photographer: Shelby Craig (Mediacom)
Investment Director: Amy Kalver (Mediacom)
Investment Manager: Clare Nash (Mediacom)
Media placement: Television Reality Programming - Channel 10 - 25th November
Campaign Description
The main restrictions in Australia lay with the broadcasters, who have a limited audience and a highly competitive landscape in which to operate. This results in programming needing to be of a very high standard before it is given airtime, particularly on the FTA channels. Rok adventure was pitched in at treatment stage and impressed the 10 Network as a piece of entertainment first and foremost.
Effectiveness
How do you convince skeptical Aussies that a German Ute could survive tough Aussie conditions? Volkswagen had ambitious sales targets for their new AMAROK Ute, in a category dominated by local brands with a proven heritage. How could we convince people the AMAROK not only belonged alongside, but could in fact dominate the competition?
Our research confirmed that Volkswagen was seen as a stylish ‘city’ brand with absolutely no heritage in the Ute category. Even more worrying was that we were dealing with Aussie men that, quite simply, didn’t think the AMAROK would stack up in the ‘local’, hard conditions:
“I reckon if you took one of these into the bush it would just fart and melt”. (Dave, 26, Builder)
The insight, like our audience, was brutally simple –‘telling’ tradies the AMAROK was tough enough to cope with Australian conditions wasn’t going to work.
Our strategy had to “Prove The Toughness” ourselves – physically demonstrate to our audience just how tough the AMAROK really is, capable of overcoming even the harshest Australian conditions. A 30” TVC wasn’t going to have the credibility needed to actually prove it so we created…
The ‘ROK ADVENTURE’:
A reality TV show starring real Aussie tradies putting the AMAROK through a series of challenges, designed to prove and demonstrate its toughness in an entertaining way. Four thrilling episodes from ‘beach to bush’ were created for a one hour special, each proving the toughness of a different product feature. We ran the show in two timeslots on Network Ten; “Prime Tradie Time” and prime time and we propagated our ‘tough as guts’ video content across a bunch of social networks with a sneak peek in order to promote the premiere of the show.
Implementation
We partnered with the Network Ten, which allowed us to integrate their talent, recruit challengers and be seen on their primary, secondary and catch-up TV channels. We secured two timeslots; “Prime Tradie Time” (early afternoon) and prime time.
A custom 30” competition spot ran for 2 weeks across their male properties and a stand-alone URL and entry portal meant our content was promoted on both Ten and ONE.
Utilizing our unique social seeding product, we then propagated our ‘tough as guts’ content across a bunch of social networks including a sneak peek of one challenge used to promote the premiere.
Outcome
The AMAROK campaign had an overwhelming effect on our audience.
Considering the real antipathy towards the Volkswagen brand as being ‘soft’ and ‘unreliable’ in our initial qualitative research, the results of the post campaign brand tracking across all 4 of the key product attributes were nothing short of phenomenal!:
• ‘Toughness’ increased by 28%
• ‘Reliable’ increased by 30%
• ‘Hardworking’ increased by 18%
• ‘Tested’ increased by 15%
Last but by no means least, our ROK ADVENTURE content was viewed, watched and understood by all our core and wider audience:
• We reached a total of 6.7 million people.
• Over 200,000 people viewed the full 1 hour special.
• 2.2m saw the recruitment spot with over 100 teams entering to compete.
• 4.3m saw the promos for the programme.
• 129,000 TV show teaser views on YouTube.