The German market is dominated by German car brands. They outperform importer brands in terms of both image and awareness. The reason is simple: Brands like VW have up to six times higher media budgets. That lead to the fact that in Germany no one thought of Citroën when considering the purchase of a new car. So, it’s not surprising that the brand had significantly lost relevance over the years.

For Citroën's 100th birthday, it was time to change the game. So, we changed the name: Citroën became “Zitrön” – inspired by the way Germans pronounce the brand.

And we did it for real. Consequently, for real.

The CEO of Citroën Germany announced the new name at the annual dealers´ conference. At the same time, rebranding took place on every channel. Whether it was the website, social media channels or even car dealerships. This way we made sure that people started to talk. The employees were our first and most credible influencers, because they were the first tweeting of what they thought was “madness”. It was picked up not only by social media and the press, but also powered by our pre prepared content to fuel the fire. For three days “Zitrön” was “the” topic in Germany, until the CEO finally admitted, that it was just a hoax.

Citroën's awareness had steadily declined in Germany, and the national marketing budget was extremely limited. We couldn't just launch a glossy media powered advertising campaign for the French company. We needed something that created talk value without spending big money on TV. Something polarizing and something that generated awareness and engagement, in a highly competitive market where Citroën has completely lost relevance. So, our public relations strategy was to use the brand name itself as a door opener to daily editorial conversations. That’s why Citroën became “Zitrön” – inspired by the insight that Germans are not able to properly pronounce the brands’ name.

Our goal was to generate a lot of awareness with a limited budged. So, we decided on a digital storytelling approach, utilizing all relevant touchpoints to communicate and catalyze the message.

With a rebranding of all channels, our website and even the car dealerships, people who researched digitally if the story was true, were always hit with “Zitrön”. That way we did not only cause people to talk about us, but also engage with us, discussing the rebranding even amongst each other. Fueling the discussion was additional content reacting to current opinions, comments and shares. Further elements of the campaign, such as the sweepstakes for the one-and-only “Zitrön Z5 Aircross”, made people revisit our social media sites and take part in the campaign.

The rebranding has been the most successful campaign Citroën has ever launched in Germany. This is not only reflected in the enormous conversation generated in Germany, but also confirmed by the numbers. In comparison to previous communication results, we saw an immense increase of all relevant KPIs.

The enormous discussion surrounding the renaming generated media impressions of €4.6 billion and earned media of €3.2 million. Other brands and even competitors interacted with us and praised Citroën for their courage.

The website sessions increased by 566% within the first 48 hours.

During the campaign, we registered an increase of 18% in test drive inquiries via the website.

The interaction rate of postings on Facebook increased by 400% (average engagement rate for postings on Facebook is 4%. Interaction rate for campaign posts: 16.68%)

But the best: for the first time in Germany, the brand awareness increased by 2%.