True Life Costs by Volkswagen

Posted on 24. May, 2011 by Goran Minov in Digital Campaign

Currently, (almost) every car manufacturer builds green and cost-efficient cars and they are not getting tired of it, writing it on every magazine ad and telling it in every TV spot they have. But as with everything you consume in an overdose, you get either bored with it or you even filter it out. What’s to do? Come up with a new and unexpected way of bringing your message across.

Now VW and DDB London published their site “True Life Costs”, as part of the ongoing ‘unbelievable value’ campaign, where the brand uses very neat filming aspects (directed by Terry Hall) and data visualization to tell an interesting, engaging story on everyday costs. In the end it’s again a car brand that’s talking about cost-efficiency, but in a such an engaging and likeable way, with interesting facts, charming interactive elements and a beautiful detailed design. Shot in tilt-shift style, to symbolize the micro-cosmos of your lifetime costs that’s being shown.

The aim is to make you realize what why a Volkswagen is valuable.

If Volkswagen represents unbelievable value, how can we get you to start believing?

Since the campaign aims at U.K. citizens, it all starts with the shocking number of £1,758,914, which is the total cost amount that an average citizen of the United Kingdom will spend in his or her lifetime.

How do you know if something is good value? The number on the price tag might only be half the story. Maybe we should be thinking about the cost of things over time. What you eat, what you do for fun, and especially what you drive. You won’t believe how it all ads up.

And while you play with the categories and adjust your estimated spendings on food, house, fun, family, car and holidays, you get little known facts on how people spend more money on what they think are clever solutions, which are apparently not. A very subtle way to make you think differently on things, make you think of a Volkswagen of more than just a car, but – as the site tells you – a very efficient invest over a lifetime period. Thus, to make you be aware of that, in every section all other category tabs disapear, while the car-tab is always visible. So you can jump back and see how less the car would cost you.

To make it a full emersive and personalized  experience, you can log in with Facebook or Twitter and invite your friends on order to compare your data and maybe start kind of a competition, who has a more cost-efficient lifestyle, or so.

Anyway, the whole site shows perfectly how to soak in an audience to spend time with your brand and – more importantly – with your key message and benefit. This is marketing off the beaten path. It combines very smart social aspects with the current trend of gamification into a brand communication tool. Very nice.

And not enough with that, the campaign gets transported further onto the according microsite via the charming logo variant “Unbelievable value”. There, the idea of “more for your money” is shown again with neat 3D cartoon-like animations that lead the user through several aspects of their cars’ unbelievable value, ending … on the offers page. My congrats. Great piece of digital storytelling.

Here you can take a look behind the scenes, know about some of the used techniques and the massive effort behind the whole story.

Source: PSFK

Tags: Facebook, Golf, storytelling, VW