2020 has been one of the worst years for the car industry since 1975, affecting mostly the sales of new cars with a historical decrease of 25% in 2020. Used cars, however, have never been so popular in France : in October 2020, 76% of car intenders prefer to buy a used car rather than a new one.

Audi had mostly promoted new cars so far and needed to completely relook at its strategy. Completely unknown from its target audience, Audi’s Used Car Program, Audi Approved plus, had to stand out from a double competition : well-established car competitors leveraging massive services and C2C players offering used cars at a cheaper price. Audi had to work on both the awareness and desirability of its Used Car Program to regain sales.

Given the brand's decreasing share of voice and the high business stakes, we had to maximise the impact of our communication by managing to combine the pride of owning an Audi with the superiority of the label in a single communication.

We noticed that all the car manufacturers communicate in a very rational way, highlighting the benefits of their warranties: peace of mind, reliability or durability. But that was missing the point. Before buying warranties, consumers are above all buying a new car that they want to be proud of. Moreover, this emotion is reflected when they were asked the question: "for us, buying a used car involves the same emotions and expectations as buying a new vehicle. "(focus group). With its thorough check by experts and warranties, buying a used Audi at Audi Approved :plus is first and foremost buying an Audi.

We deployed an activation that completely revisits the pre-roll format in a new way. The idea was to broadcast contextual messages on YouTube, calling out the audience just before the "old" videos that still generate millions of views and emotion today. Hundreds of iconic music tracks, legendary concerts, historic moments or unmissable sporting events have been targeted to highlight the attractiveness of Audi Occasion :plus vehicles.

This activation has also been implemented on Spotify to introduce music tracks from the 70s, 80s and 90s and will be rolled out when possible again, in Paris cinemas that are rerunning old cult films.

Despite a media investment much lower than in 2019 and a COVID context, the campaign performed better in media and business than the previous year.

The campaign helped raise strong awareness towards Audi Approved :plus cars : it generated 7.5 M views with 100% completion vs 803,660 views at 100% in 2019. It also generated 3 x more trafic (unique visitors) to the website and 50% more leads than in the same period in 2019.

The campaign also and above all generated an uplift in sales allowing the Audi network to better fight the second lockdown: 4,172 vehicles sold over the period of the campaign vs. 3,981 during that of 2019. That is to say 4.8% growth while the premium used car market only increased by 3% that same month (Source: AutoScout24). In 3 weeks, this campaign generated more than 11% of Audi's used car sales in 2020.