Audi Takes Over the Inauguration
Posted by Michael, Griffin York & Krause Marketing Strategy
On Tuesday, when millions of Americans tuned in to watch history take place during the Inauguration of our 44th President Barack Obama, one marketer was patiently waiting to make their impression. Audi, the German luxury automaker, figured the Inauguration would be the perfect place for them to launch a large one-day integrated advertising campaign. In an economy where most advertisers are watching their spending Audi is doing the opposite. Audi is gearing up spending, this year after posting their most successful sales year to date in 2008.
According to reports in Ad Age, Audi is planning on spending 15% more on advertising in 2009 when compared to 2008. Audi’s Inauguration plan was to blanket multiple media outlets with their advertisements in hopes of reaching up to 50,000,000 Americans, a substantial number to achieve on any day besides Super Bowl Sunday. Audi’s first move was to present and sponsor the 6:30 national news on all the three major networks, NBC, CBS and ABC. All three evening news broadcasts were presented with limited commercial interruption, except for Audi advertisements and reached over 19 million viewers.
Second, Audi was the exclusive sponsor of a special eight-page newspaper section titled “Progress is beautiful”. The advertisements were placed in a number of major newspapers including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post to name a few. The goal of the print campaign was to reach slightly over 8.6 million viewers.
The final piece of Audi’s one-day strategy was to be the exclusive sponsor of streaming web broadcasts on major news sites. If you happened to watch the Inauguration on ABCNews.com, CBSNews.com, MSNBC.com or Washingtonpost.com you were subject to sit though a video commercial from Audi before the event. Audi hoped that its Web sponsorship would reach over 30 million sets of eyes. Turns out that Audi’s Web sponsorship paid off twice as much. According to reports Audi received nearly 70 million views with MSNBC.com leading with around16.3 million viewers. As more people turn to Web casts for their information you can expect to see more advertisers placing commercials on news sites.
What made this campaign special, in addition to the media execution that allowed Audi to reach almost 100 million views in a day, was the way that their current campaign theme “Progress is beautiful” resonated with consumers on Tuesday. Scott Keogh, Chief marketing officer of Audi of America, said the company is communicating “the inherent spirit of progress and innovation that is the core of our corporate DNA” and that “the uncommon shared experience of the inauguration offered a remarkable opportunity to connect with Americans” by sponsoring this historic day’s news. (Ad Age 1/20/09) In case you missed the spot that Audi has been running lately, here is a link to their Progress is beautiful commercial. Next for Audi is a planned Super Bowl commercial in addition to advertisements during the Oscars. For viewers wishing to get a sneak peak at Audi’s Super Bowl commercial, register at www.audiusa.com before January 26 and Audi will send the ad to you before the big game.
Tags: Advertising, Integrated marketing, Media
