A year after Dieselgate, people felt betrayed. As a cornerstone of German society and economy, it was like a close friend cheating on you. As a result, Volkswagen’s trust and likeability, reflected by the YouGov BrandIndex, were at by far lower levels compared to the year before.

But a traditional image campaign was out of the question. Our task was to drive sales for one of the most important volume models in the portfolio: The Tiguan.

We knew the only way to stimulate sales was to bring the brand back into people’s hearts first. So we needed a new approach to traditional tactical communication.

Our solution: a hearts-first strategy and a typical human Volkswagen tone-of-voice. We created an irresistibly funny, stand-alone online film that combined a product benefit with highly emotional storytelling. The Laughing Horses were born. Not only did these charming horses provide the perfect stage for the product, effectively activating our audience to find out more about our hero feature the Trailer Assist. They also really made it into the hearts of the German public, making them laugh together with the brand like never before.

The result: Our charming four legged friends strengthened the brand during one of its most difficult times in history. In the month directly after our film was released, trust and likeability went up by 29%. Talk value increased by 22%. And the overall image score got a much needed boost of 12%.

This hearts-first strategy proved to be the right approach for the bottom-line: Google searches for „Trailer Assist“ went up 600% directly after the release of the film. Configurations by 59% (with Trailer Assist) and 22% respectively (overall Tiguan). In the end, the laughter got people to the dealerships, reflected in a 30% sales increase compared to the same period the year before. And all of this while beating the internal Volkswagen benchmark as well as the YouTube Ads Leaderboard Average, with over 40 million views and a staggering 95% earned media.

Quite an effect for some sneaky horses, laughing at a poor guy trying to park a car with a trailer.