Vorsprung durch Technik. Three words discovered on the wall of an Audi factory in 1982 that would become one of the most enduring brand ideas in history.

As BBH’s founding client, Audi has been with us through shifting political eras, rising and falling economies and an unprecedented technological revolution. It’s a journey packed with creative, commercial and strategic highs. The last two decades have been no exception. In fact, Audi UK transitioned from delivering just half the sales of BMW in 2000 to leading by 2014. No easy feat.

After years of consistent sales growth and world class communication, no-one expected Audi to be able to take another leap forward. But, over the last five years, channelling the meaning of Vorsprung durch Technik, we threw ourselves into remixing an already successful brand to create something extraordinary.

With a healthy mix of respect and disrespect for the way things were done, we remixed the Audi brand - strategically and creatively. We did this by defining the feeling of ‘progressive premium’, sweeping it through the whole brand and telling the story of ‘beautiful cars with amazing brains’. We “moved it on without moving it off” as Nigel Bogle likes to say and ushered in a new era of more playful, vibrant and charming creative work.

A rich seam of campaigns have been generated from this brand remix, but the highlight is perhaps ‘Clowns’. This Cannes winning 2017 campaign made the many brains featured within Audi cars feel magical and charming. In a world inhabited by reckless clowns, Audi’s safety features keep drivers seriously safe. With the drama set to a remixed rendition of ‘Send in the Clowns’, the campaign is the definition of a more creative, playful and charming Audi.

This period has undoubtedly been a creative high point for Audi, but the results came too with Audi returning to dominance in perceptions around innovation and brand desire. This helped sell more cars at higher specification (with average customer value increasing by almost 7%), grow 3x faster than the UK market by 2017, create over £2bn incremental revenue (between 2015-Q1 2018) and, over the same period, generate a profit ROMI of 2.17 for every £1 invested.

In this paper you will see how the best, big, brand ideas are well defined without being fixed and how new relevance can be remixed in, to great effect. You will see how progressive thinking, research and data can unlock progressive creativity, making a brand feel more exciting and desirable than ever. You will see the supercharged power of Vorsprung Durch Technik.