On 11th November 2009, 7.8 million readers across 16 editions opened the TOI to notice the Volkswagen roadblock.Within 5 hours Volkswagen was the HOTTEST SEARCHED WORD in India (Source-Google).TOM increased from 4% to 32% (Source-IMRB).50% recall for Volkswagen after 36 hours, compared to 11% for brands using regular full page (Universal McCann Study).Sales spiked by 169% (Source-Volkswagen).The campaign was covered extensively by the leading publications and blogs talking about the innovativeness and scale, generating tremendous word of mouth.The cost of owning 13 pages was the same as that of 4 full-page ads.

To grab consumer attention & mind-space, our solution was to take-over the newspaper. Instead of full-pages, half-pages or Jackets, that had become the standard for car launches, we created UNPRECEDENTED DOMINANCE & IMPACT by taking over entire 15,000sq cm of space in The Times of India. For the first time ever, a newspaper had only 1 single advertiser, ensuring 100% mindshare for Volkswagen. Creatively we decided to focus on the German origins of the brand and its rich and outstanding legacy. The roadblock clearly established the range of products along with their positioning for the market. The space consumed was used to communicate various facets of the brand. The audacity and innovativeness of the campaign immediately gave Volkswagen the same stature as was accorded to the leading players in the marketplace. By end of the day the campaign had become the talk of town amongst consumers and the business fraternity.

Volkswagen drove into India a decade after its global rivals. Globally Volkswagen stood for innovation and engineering excellence. However in India, few could pronounce the name. Competing brands had awareness levels of 70-80%, while Volkswagen was at 9%. The task was to increase awareness quickly, with impact, innovatively.

Research revealed high category involvement and information being actively sought by consumers. One unifying media habit of the Target Audience, educated upper-middle-class males, was that they subscribed to an English daily newspaper. The unique insight was ‘Consumers love cars but automobile advertising is a blind spot given the plethora of brands advertising everyday in any given publication.’We created a roadblock with India’s largest English daily, The Times of India (TOI). This showcased the brand without any competing noise. It helped Volkswagen establish its global brand values, explained what Das Auto stands for, asserted core brand strengths and showcased Volkswagen’s commitment to India.