Winning the Super Bowl

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TV adverts would need to create buzz, extend the dialogue about the brand, and tell people more about the Passat and the Beetle, including their features. To ensure reach the ads were placed during the Super Bowl, as it's the most watched televised event and a true cultural phenomenon for Americans. However, it is also the annual creative showcase for the world's biggest advertisers, which creates huge competition, and increases the clutter.

The Super Bowl's commercials are just as culturally resonant as the game, but the rise of online and social media has changed how people interact with and discuss brands. VW had the creative but so did the other advertisers. The competition rely on a "big reveal" for their Super Bowl spots during the game, VW's insights showed that consumers' Super Bowl experiences start well before the actual game and extend far beyond it. The brand leveraged this knowledge to develop and execute an integrated media campaign that would rise above the clutter and have a lasting impact on pop culture.

The idea

The idea was to turn VW's Super Bowl spots into their own highly anticipated event. Based on consumer Super Bowl behaviour, they established a strategy that capitalised on buzz before, during and after the game by leveraging diverse rich media ad formats through search and contextual channels, and using Volkswagen-owned social channels.

An extended version of the actual spot was seeded online a week before the Super Bowl, which achieved over 13 million views prior to the game. The commercials were also placed with custom editorial on online hubs, such as Yahoo! and MSN. Subsequently, over 120 additional blogs and media outlets mentioned the spots, including Perez Hilton, AdWeek, The New York Times, MotorTrend, and BrandWeek. As buzz mounted, we leveraged Volkswagen-owned social channels, and our aggressive search campaign directed brand, generic and competitive paid keyword traffic to "handraiser" pages. Visibility of the TV spot were expanded by paid means (paid search, social and contextual), with the goal of generating long-term interest in the new vehicles for the weeks following the Super Bowl.

Within all of these placements, consumers were driven to a "Inside the VW Academy" web series on YouTube. These humorous and informative webisodes weaved together useful product features in an entertaining way. Engagement was sustained through a retargeting strategy that cookie'd the millions of viewers on YouTube.com for the commercials and retargeted them across the Google Display Network. The brand also secured exclusive ownership of sports network ESPN's mobile site the day of the Super Bowl and secured the coveted YouTube homepage the day after the game. Finally, media support behind a retail sales message was moved up in February to drive people to showrooms.

Results

Year-over-year VW February retail sales were up by 32%.

VW had record monthly sales for 2011 in April, following the Super Bowl and Passat vehicle launch.

Over 42 million digital video views. The VW Passat ads became the highest-rated auto ad video in YouTube history.

Record web search interest in the Volkswagen brand around the Super Bowl. Comparing 2010 vs 2011 there were +1,232% increase in impressions on game day, +2,212% increase in clicks to VW.com on game day, +180% higher CTR.

Paid search VW Super Bowl campaigns saw a 536% lift in clicks on Super Bowl game day versus pre-launch (before January 31).