Orchids and Onions – VW’s T-Cross ad hits home

You would think that, when putting together marketing and advertising campaigns, brand managers and ad agencies would have as top-of-mind one thing: what’s the target market?

From such single-minded vision does good and effective advertising flow.

Two such examples this week come from the car business – one from brand advertising, the other from retail.

Volkswagen’s recently launched T-Cross small SUV is aimed squarely at young couples (and possibly those with small families).

They are starting to make their own way in the world and want to do things their way … make mistakes, maybe, but they are certainly not going to be pressured into doing what others want or expect.

The T-Cross is an urban poser SUV but that is increasingly what the market wants these days.

And the launch ad for the car positions it as an urban escape vehicle. It may not be able to overcome the rocks and rivers like hardcore 4x4s do, but it can dodge the other pitfalls of modern living.

In this case, it’s the parents, who pursue this young couple like they are escaped fugitives.

They just want to talk, say Mom and Dad. But it’s the sort of conversation a young couple wants to avoid, like: when are you getting married? And: when am I going to have some grandchildren?

So the couple flees in the T-Cross, pursued first in a car by determined mother and then, like the cops in a pursuit movie, in a helicopter with Dad in command.

They’re still fleeing as the ad ends, having showcased nicely the vehicle and underlined its appeal with the punchline: “Play by your rules”.

It’s yet another in a long line of effective VW ads done by Ogilvy Joburg. So Orchids to both Volkswagen and to Ogilvy.

At the opposite end of the scale is a simple, yet very clever pitch by Isuzu for its KB range of workhorse bakkies.

In the one-ton, single-cab segment of the market, KB dominates, selling even more than giant rival Toyota’s Hilux.

The reason for that is that, over the years, Isuzu’s bakkies have proved to thousands of small businesspeople that they are strong, reliable and cost-effective to run. The brand’s overall punchline, “We’ve got work to do”, sums that up elegantly.

But, how to entice the “little guys” into a KB at a time when the market is tough, to put it mildly? Appeal to their pockets … and that’s what the KB’s “call to action” print and TV ads do.

Recognising that many small businesses charge their customers by the hour, Isuzu and its agency, Admakers, decided to pitch the KB’s price in these terms: how little it can cost your business to own this bakkie.

And that figure is R20 an hour, or just over R3,000 in a working month. Any small business has got to sit up and take notice of that.

It’s effective because it perfectly understands its target audience’s needs and how to address them.

It’s also a lesson in combining target-market information with brand essence into something which works. A bit like the KB bakkie – no frills, no fuss, but it sure gets the job done.

Orchids to Isuzu and to Admakers.

Many are those who say if a company does not have a social media presence, it is bound to fail.

I beg to differ, because in my experience, the vast majority of social media interactions between brands and their customers are negative, with Twitter and Facebook turned into complaints platforms which allow a bad message to proliferate quickly.

If you do run a social media presence then, for goodness sake, respond when your brand is being trashed or questioned.

This Planet Fitness failed spectacularly to do over the past week as social media users began questioning it about a staff member who, having saved someone from drowning in one of its pools, was promised a reward and lifeguard training. What happened, many asked.

Silence from Planet Fitness. This made matters worse because it looked as though the company had something to hide. Despite relentless battering from people like columnist Darrel Bristow-Bovey, Planet Fitness stayed mute.

Eventually, one of its partners, the Dis-Chem group, jumped in from its own Twitter account to assure everyone that the man in question had received his reward and training had been arranged.

Bristow-Bovey thanked DisChem but wondered what was wrong with Planet Fitness.

He also pointed out the bizarre fact that the first Twitter account to “like” the Dis-Chem explanation was Planet Fitness.

Well done to Dis-Chem but an Onion to Planet Fitness. This shows a mismanaged social media presence is worse than none at all.

Brendan Seery.

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