5 Tips of Enhancing Brand Values: Lessons from Audi's Success in UK [Marketing Case Study #3]

(Photo from Campaign)

You are very proud of your products' quality that you think are worth premium prices, but many people buy cheaper and lower-spec lines, and you don't know why.

It was the case for Audi in the UK until 2014. While the premium car brand had jumped up from No.3 in the 2000s to No.1 in 2014, the market leader suffered from low average selling prices and losing its brand edge despite launching high-spec products with cutting-edge technologies.

However, from 2015 to 2018, Audi effectively premiumized itself with £2 billion additional sales by carefully adjusting its brand position while the market slowed down by 7.5%.

How did Audi do that? What tips can we get from this case?

Table of Contents

• Tips 1: Get back to your brand promise.
• Tips 2: Look outside your category.
• Tips 3: Blend new spices.
• Tips 4: Adjust your positioning gradually.
• Tips 5: Put some devices in it.
• Takeaways for Marketers

Tips 1: Get back to your brand promise.

People change as time goes by. For brands, it isn't bad or even better to keep fitting themselves to the outer world. But sometimes, you get lost and forget what to promise as a brand.

Audi's brand promise is simple but powerful; "Vorsprung Durch Technik," meaning "Progress through Technology." As stated, it had heavily invested in and led innovations of the market.

(Photo from Car Guy)

However, after the financial crisis in 2009, Audi focused 89% of its media spend on product features, especially fuel efficiency, corresponding with worsening consumer sentiment.

While contributing to the sales increase, the marcomms hurt Audi's brand values, decreasing brand desire and distinctiveness among the "Prestige" audience with higher incomes and will to buy premium high-spec models. 

In other words, the luxury brand had emphasized too much on the "Technology" side of the promise and forgot the other side, "Progress." Recognizing this issue, Audi decided to update the way of branding.

Thus, overfitting to a competitive landscape deviating from the original brand promise is one of the main reasons for brand value decrease. So, be careful. 

Tips 2: Look outside your category.

After going back to your original brand promise, the next step is to look forward. But how to do that?

My recommendation is to look outside your category and learn from other industries because they often set a new standard of brand experience that your target audience demands.

In this case, Audi intensively analyzed the best luxury brands from food, fashion, fragrance, and beauty to understand how the "premium" was changing and identify "The New Codes of Progressive Premium."

(Photo from warc)

The conclusion was that the "Prestige" audience newly valued creativity, adventure, curiosity, and wellbeing in brand experiences, in addition to the lasting core of luxuries such as status, superior craftsmanship, and design. 

In short, the "Progressive" luxury brand needed to be more playful, exciting, and ingenious.

Tips 3: Blend new spices.

Now, it's time to fix your branding issue. 

Unless on the verge of death, the best way is not to dramatically change, but fine-tune its brand positioning, blending its core with new spices from outside to manage both relevance and consistency.

In this case, Audi kept its brand essence of understatement and charm since research showed that the audience saw those characteristics as a modern symbol of their success and linked with "Technology."

(Photo from warc)

On the contrary, the brand replaced its images of austereness and coldness, the shadow side of "Technology" (the photo on top), with playfulness, excitement, and creativity as a representative of "Progress" (the photo at bottom).

With this finding, Audi developed the new brand concept of "Beautiful Cars with Amazing Brains" and kicked off a branding campaign series.

Tips 4: Adjust your positioning gradually.

Unlike product launch promotions, branding needs time and patience since people's perceptions do not change overnight.

Therefore, Audi carefully designed its branding roadmap, managing the timing of shifting the marcomms' theme and emphasis.

Firstly, in 2015, the German brand declared the beginning of its new era with the TV commercial named "Birth," followed by "Spin" in 2016. Both TVCs played the role of letting the audience feel Audi's fresh flavors; playfulness, excitement, and creativity.

Then, Audi intentionally switched its spotlight on the new, innovative technologies such as intelligent four-wheel drive technology, driver-assist technologies, dashboard-screen tech, and safety features in September 2017, when they were about to be launched.

The pinnacle was the "Clowns" series. By the smile-inducing films, Audi successfully incorporated "The New Codes of Progressive Premium" with its image; i.e., after two years of the new concept roll-out, "Progress through Technology" was finally completed.

Like this case, if you want to increase brand values, I recommend such a well-elaborated step-by-step approach because it aligns well with the audience's perceptions and comfortably lifts his or her receptiveness with the new brand position.

Tips 5: Put some devices in it.

It is quite challenging to become a topic in today's world, with too many products and services. Same for branding, we need some devices that the audience enjoys talking about you.

One of Audi's devices was music. In every audio-visual comms, a lovely and impressive tune was there, such as Dusty Springfield's cover of Noel Harrison's "Windmills Of Your Mind" in "Spin," and Stephen Sondheim's "Send In The Clowns" in "Clowns." 

(Photo from Amazon)

The songs perfectly matched the dramas and became icons and a hook to remind the brand. For example, partnering with Shazam, every time people shazammed the soundtrack used in "Clowns," a pop-up came up and told that Audi donated money to a road charity, Brake. 

Another device was data-driven outdoor ads. It was the first time for Audi in 2016 to challenge such tech-campaigns, which analyzed time, weather, transport data from APIs displaying the more relevant and engaging creatives at roadside locations. 

Along with a carefully planned branding strategy, these actions helped Audi become more visible, resulting in the No.1 desired brands among the harder-to-please "Prestige" audience, the biggest market share growth in the UK, 7% increase in average customer value, over £2 billion incremental revenue, and an impressive ROMI of 2800% between 2015 and 2018(Q1).

Takeaways for Marketers

To sum, if you want to succeed in increasing brand values;

1. Get back to your brand promise, confirm whether you neglect the pledge or not, and get hints on what your branding issue is.
2. Look outside your category to understand the brand experience that your target audience demands.
3. Blend your brand cores with new spices from outside the industry to manage both relevance and consistency.
4. Adjust your positioning gradually so that your audience effortlessly catch up and accept your new brand concept.
5. Put some devices in branding comms to become more visible to people in a highly competitive world.

If you want to know more details about this case, please check warc.com and Audi/Vorsprung Durch Technik: Beautiful Cars With Amazing Brains, this article's source.

Thank you for reading, and bye!