New identity for Volkswagen
The Volkswagen brand has been around for 82 years and will be entering its new era with a new brand design globally.
Volkswagen announced a new brand design across all channels to create a new customer experience to reflect the themes; innovative, connected, authentic and more digital. The change of branding will be taking place over two years and will involve replacing about 70 000 logos across 171 markets and more than 10 000 facilities of dealers and service partners throughout the world. Taking place in cost-optimised and resource-conserving phases, the changeover will commence from the end of 2019.
“The new brand design marks the start of the new era for Volkswagen, by formulating new content and with new products; the brand is undergoing a fundamental transformation towards a future with a neutral emission balance for everyone. Now is the right time to make the new attitude of our brand visible to the outside world,” Jürgen Stackmann, Member of the Volkswagen Board of Management responsible for Sales, Marketing and After-Sales.
Mike Glendinning, Sales and Marketing Director for Volkswagen Group South Africa said: “The new brand design comes in light of the development of vehicles that are more connected to market needs than ever before. It is for this reason that Volkswagen invested in a comprehensive revamp of every part of the brand to reflect and connect with its people better – from internal stakeholders, customers and the industry at large; in this way, the brand remains true to always put people first.”
Although the brand will retain the dark blue, light blue and white corporate colours, the logo will see some reduction made to it to reflect a clearer, simpler and digitally appealing design. Volkswagen will also be placing more emphasis on people throughout all of its imagery and aiming for bolder more colourful visuals to create a more human, approachable and authentic aesthetic. “We have created a new holistic global brand experience on all channels and across all touchpoints. As a general principle, the aim in future will not be to show a perfect advertising world. In our presentation, we want to become more human and more lively, to adopt the customer’s perspective to a greater extent and to tell authentic stories,” Jochen Sengpiehl, Chief Marketing Officer of Volkswagen.
For those that will see the new Volkswagen T-Cross commercial airing from 21 September, will also notice a South African female voice replacing the traditional format and for the first time, a sound logo rather than the original brand claim at the end of the film. Concurrent to the local launch of Volkswagen’s first compact SUV; the T-Cross, Volkswagen will be introducing the new brand design at the customer event taking place on the 21st and 22nd of September at Montecasino in Johannesburg.
