Audi Elements - Audi tries Viral Marketing to promote the new A4

Well, this is sad: Audi apparently has wasted hundreds of thousands of Euros for an online viral ad campaign to promote the launch of their new A4 and the result ? Just another prove that bad viral marketing doesn't have to be cheap !

If you want to see what I am talking about, head over to www.audi-elements.com. First you have to enter your name (yes, your real name!) and your email address (yes, your real address!). Hey, you want to see this great ad! Giving up your anonymity is not too much to ask for, right ?

Okay, so a few minutes later, you find this in your inbox:

After clicking the image, you get to see a boring 3 minute long flash video - which, by the way, took 2,5 minutes to load. And here comes the big idea: at the end of the clip your name is being shown - as the ultimate attention getter, I suppose. Well, your name or whatever you have entered when you ordered the personalized link. In my case, this happened to be "clueless audi marketing executive" making the clip a lot more fun to watch ! ;-)

So far, so good. But Audi still has one more ace up its sleeve.

When all the initial excitement has subsided, you realize that you got an email from a fake dude called Keiko, who is obviously more than willing to let you into his little "circle of trust":

I had to get this message to you before it is too late. I’ve seen Vorsprung durch Technik-VdT-the secret element inside every Audi.

Don’t let anyone tell you it doesn’t exist. As I write there are those who are desperately trying to discover VdT. They would give anything to get their hands on it.

See it for yourself and take a test drive.

http://www.audi.co.uk

Keiko

And that's the final dramatic climax of the whole campaign: after being forced to jump through all these hoops, the potential customer ends up on the standard Audi homepage, which is featuring right now the all new - oops - Audi A6 Avant !!! Sorry, but the A4 seems to be missing in action !? At least I couldn't find anything about it, when I looked at the page tonight. Oh dear...

Am I a little bit too negative here ? At least, Tim Garbutt (managing director of 20:20 London, the agency behind the campaign) sees things quite differently:

"Apart from the ground-breaking personalisation twist and email contact this Audi internet film represents a step-change in online marketing. Through digital technology we can create an experience as epic and immersive as a broadcast commercial. And it is fully interactive."

Wow, that sounds much more positive, doesn't it ? A personalisation twist, email contact and full interactivity ? What more could we (or Audi) ask for ?

How about a little clip like this one ? Funny to watch, easy to pass around and at the end linked to a great landing page, which would tell me why the A4 is the best car in the world...!? Okay, I see: the personalisation twist is missing... bummer...

Btw, one thing is really interesting: looks like the personalized links are consecutively numbered! Mine was number 114178 - May 19th, at 21:53 CET. Let's see how many of these links are being sent out in the next few days...

(via Adrants)

Comments

[Peter Riley]

Interesting to see your comments on our recent work for Audi Cars. If I could just correct some of your assumptions, you may sleep better.
We avoid the term viral marketing because it's not what we set out to do with this campaign. The work was created for a specific audience, contained in a database. The database contained names and emails so the recipients didn't have to go through a contact page of filling in their personal details. Only towards the end of the campaign did we produce a generic version, which believe it or not came from sites asking if they could host the clip.
The success of a campaign can only be gauged by a return on investment. Now, it's too early to say if this fulfills its commercial objectives and generates test drives, but we did a similar campaign for Audi a few months ago which WAS a success and prompted Audi to adopt this type of communication as best practice and roll out the campaign across other territories. And they asked us to do something along the same lines for the A4, so I guess that means it was worthwhile.
As for the link going to the A6 on audi.co.uk, I admit that's not right. However the website is looked after by a different agency and I guess we could've integrated a bit better.
Finally, I think you mentioned it was sad or boring, or both. I presume from the fact you spend a great deal of time on your blog that you are internet savvy and see this kind of work all the time, but again please remember there are lots of people out there who don't use the internet as much as you or I. And those are the people we aim at with this communication and the feedback is usually good.
With this in mind maybe you should think twice about nasty comments about 'clueless Audi marketing executive'. I truly believe brave clients and agencies will make our industry a better place. Maybe we should be encouraging each other to try new things.

[Martin]

This is interesting. I can very much see that a personalised film on the web is an innovative and interesting solution in a direct marketing context. Let's assume that I, as a prospect or brand fan, am used to receiving Audi direct marketing emails. One day I get one that prompts me to go see a film on the web, and then that film has my name in it... I might in fact be very positively surprised.

(Even though I agree with Björn that the film is rather lame - irrespectively of whether someone is an Internet expert or not. No matter how much of an expert you are, you can still tell a boring story from one that isn't. ;-)

I agree - it wouldn't be a very good idea to brand and sell this as a viral campaign. It's a creative DM solution, not viral. Did the client push you to also turn it into a "viral attempt"? Did they issue a press release with the term viral in it, against your advice? (Well, I'm not really expecting answers to this... after all, they're your clients... ;-)

[Bjoern Ognibeni]

Hi Peter (note to readers: he is from the agency which is behind "Audi Elements"):

Thanks for your comment !

I didn't know that this was originally a targeted direct marketing campaign, not a viral one. All I had was the piece in Brand Republic, which I linked to and this article had viral marketing all over it. The other aspect of the campaign wasn't mentioned at all...!?

The personalization is a nice twist, I agree. But why did you put this at the end of the film ? How many people really sit through the whole 3 minutes ?? Why not put it at the very beginning to get the viewer hooked ???

Is the clip boring ? I still think so and many people I talked to about it (no, most of them not internet savvy), too. But of course: beauty lies in the eye of the beholder and perhaps the whole story gets more exciting when you see it in context with the dm part. Btw, have you noticed the typo at the beginning of the clip ("Vorspung" instead of "Vorsprung") ?

Anyway, I hope my little rant didn't cause any trouble. If you check out the other postings here on Site-9, you will see that most of them are indeed positive and encouraging. But in todays world - with weblogs full of personal opinions everywhere and Google indexing them like crazy - this kind of negative feedback can always happen. But I think that's fine, as long as it leads to an open, interesting and fair discussion and that is what I want to achieve with Site-9...

Talking about weblogs: how about a 20:20 weblog ?

[Martin]

Typo? Didn't spot that. Ouch!! That's worse than the A6 link...