VOLKSWAGEN INDIA: DAS AUTO, DIGITALLY

Group -5

Submitted To :
Introduction
• Volkswagen was established in 1937 at Wolfsburg, Germany.
• Largest automaker in Europe and second largest globally behind
General Motors.
• VW was the flagship brand of Volkswagen group, which also owned
Audi , Bentley, Lamborghini and Skoda.
• Its core markets were Germany and China. It aimed to become the
world’s largest automaker by 2018.
• In India, the group was present with Skoda, Audi, and VW.
• In 2007, the group launched Volkswagen in India with Passat.
Issues
• Indian auto industry started showing signs of decline in the 2010s.
• During 2012-13 sales in the automobile industry declined by 6.7% and
the forecast of 2013-14 was also low.
• Due to this Volkswagen’s plan to acquire market in India was a bit
difficult.
Hence Volkswagen decided to go for digital marketing for building its
brand
Methods Adopted
• Building Awareness
• Tapping the Consumer Intent
• Enhancing the Website Experience
• Planet Volkswagen
• Customer Relationship Management
• Engaging the Consumers
• Anything For Jetta
• Jetta YouTube Test Drive
Building Awareness
• Advertising through search advertisements, display banners, rich
online applications, website designing and social media.
• India had 73 million internet users. 50% of the users were in the age
group of 25 to 44 who were the likely target segment for Volkswagen.
• VW focused mostly on creating awareness through display ads. VW
spent 50% of its budget on display, 30% on paid search & 20% on
social media.
• It advertised on reputed, influential & high traffic news & information
portals such as MSN, sify, Money Control & Yahoo.
• Initially displayed advertising on mass portals. Later shifted to
targeted displays.
Tapping the Consumer Intent
• Display Advertising
• Search Engine Marketing which included both organic and paid
search advertising
• Used SEO optimization techniques to improve the position of the
website in a SERP
• VW also used Paid search advertising.
• VW divided the keywords into brand ,competition or category
• VW advertised aggressively on brand keywords as the consumer was
actively seeking information about the brand
Website Analytics
Enhancing the Website Experience

• User lands up in VW website after clicking the add

Total Page Views 33718289

Total Test Drive Requests 2011 28664

2012 30444

Total 59108

Visit to lead ratio 1.37%

https://www.volkswagen.co.in/en.html
Planet VW
• VW conceptualized an immersive and larger than life brand
destination called “Planet”
• VW used themes like “Think Blue” and “Text Drive”
• Later VW had another project called “Das Traveler”
 Engaging the consumers
• In order to engage with the fans it created a content calendar for all the
problems
• Videos and images contributed to higher engagement rates compared to
images and posted the same in all the platforms
• Main goal was to engage consumers by gaining more fans on social media
platform
• Role of Social media: Brand building, ORM and CRM
• The company in order to communicate with customers, it wanted to bring all
its customers to its FB page
• They also integrated social media with each of its digital campaigns. Two
platforms were created to provide update on IPL
#Anything4jetta
• Its objective was to increase unaided brand awareness by 60%, create
conversations about the cars, and increase its desirability.
• Grey Digital, the agency organized the contest for people to reveal what
they would do to acquire the Jetta.
• The platform chosen was Twitter as Jetta was a premium car targeted at an
audience of successful and passionate males, 25-44 years of age, and
belonging to SEC
• #anything4jetta, the tweet with maximum retweet would be the winner.
All the tweets were redirected to microsite.
• VW prepared video content showing people doing quirky stuff for jetta as
singing on road, controlling the traffic, or dancing in the board meeting.
• The contest was launched nationwide through full front page ads in the
Times of India and The Hindu
• Twitter users increased by 15% after the campaign and #anything4jetta
became No.1 trending topic in the twitter and received 1,442 test drive
requests
Jetta TSI YouTube
• The campaign took the test drives from roads to viewers’ desktops, tablets and
mobile
• The objectives was to engage users and allow them to ask questions about the
car just as they would do it in a real test drive
• Banner appeared on MoneyControl, Economic Times, MSN homepage, YouTube
and Yahoo.
• VW responded to the user queries though customized video made in a humorous
manner, these featured on a special customized YouTube Channel. The customers
were informed through email that the answer had been posted.
• The videos addressed queries such as how much mileage would the car give or
how much time does it take to accelerate from 0 to 100 km.
• It was able to reach 21 million unique users against planned 10 million users, over
888,733 video views in 21 days, 517 unique questions, 700% increase in channel
subscribers, CTR 0f 0.74%, 1.3 million clicks, and additional 13,846 Facebook Fans
• Out of INR 21 million Total campaign expenses, 15 million was spent on digital
marketing
 CRM Practises of Volkswagen
• Bifurcation of browser tabs
• Extensive follow-up
• Customer centric preferences
• Sales process feedback system
• Integrated CRM system
• Free service camps for the customers
who owned cars