Awareness of the Volkswagen e-Golf has leapt by 17% overtaking that of its competitors, such as Tesla and the Nissan Leaf, following a recent advertising campaign by TI Media. Meanwhile, purchase consideration grew by 22%, while those unlikely to buy the e-Golf fell by 7%.
The aim of the campaign – which ran across Trusted Reviews, one of the largest consumer electronic review websites in the UK – was to break down deeply embedded consumer perceptions of the Golf as a purely conventional vehicle, held due to the iconic nature of the car. Volkswagen also wanted to make those currently in the market for an electric vehicle aware of the e-Golf and educate them about the key benefits that ‘the first electric car you can love’ delivers.
“Two advertorials were created by our marketing collective The Foundry for Volkswagen based on original research carried out by TI Media into people’s perceptions of electric vehicles,” explained TI Media’s Head of Strategy and Marketing Paul Lowrey. “These were then run in the electric vehicle section of Trusted Reviews in order to raise awareness among in-market audiences of the reasons to buy an e-vehicle. Each advertorial was surrounded by a bespoke, high-impact ‘skin’ to drive awareness and clicks through to the e-Golf website and a landing page.”
To drive reach and scale, TI Media then shared e-Golf Desktop Skins and Mobile Scroller rich media formats, designed and built by its in-house studio, across its marketplace publisher portfolio. These were distributed programmatically to drive the cost-efficient reach of the campaign.
“We drove the most consideration among younger audiences, particularly families who are most likely more aware of sustainability and issues with pollution and therefore want to work on making the world a cleaner place for their children to live in,” explained Lowrey. “Increasing spontaneous brand awareness of the e-Golf by 17% to overtake that of its competitors is a huge achievement when considering not many people associated electric vehicles with Volkswagen prior to this campaign.”
The e-Golf has now been established firmly on the electric car stage and the campaign shows the power of educating an audience with carefully curated content placed in trusted media to change long-standing perceptions.
“We were delighted to work with TI Media on the launch of the Volkswagen e-Golf model and the fact the campaign achieved a 22% uplift in purchase consideration in a market where there are a lot of perceived barriers to purchase, was brilliant!” said Victoria Farley, Senior Publisher Planner/Buyer at PHD.