How Lutz Kothe changed the way VW looks at marketing in India
Tags : Spotlight
Head of Marketing and PR, Volkswagen Passenger Cars, India to talk of the marketing strategy that worked for his brand at Pitch CMO Summit in Mumbai on November 21
Think about Volkswagen and what comes to your mind? An automobile company with an extravagant marketing budget. Among the biggest advertisers in the automobile sector. Well, you are in for a little surprise here: Volkswagen is not even among the top 10 au-tomobile spenders in India; or is it so? Talking to IMPACT, Lutz Kothe, Head of Marketing and PR, Volkswagen Passenger Cars, Volkswagen GroupSales India, shares his secret formula of dominating once and then going selective on media. He says, “The market is totally overestimating what we are spending. The trick behind the VW success story is: Hitonce, hard and big, to create awareness and then go very selective.”
He further shared that for every new launch or campaign, VW has followed the same strategy of creating a buzz with one huge campaign in print and then targeting the core audience through digital media and selective TV channels. This strategy (of first domi-nating and then going selective on media) has helped make Polo and Vento the most awaited launches of 2010.
This and many such secret formulas will be unravelled by Kothe on November 21 at the Mumbai leg of the Pitch CMO Summit, 2011.
It is worth noting that Volkswagen entered the Indian market as the 14th automobile brand and created a big buzz through its innovative communications. Various models from the Volkswagen stable are doing well in their respective segments. Polo has carved its own niche while Vento dethroned Honda City from its leadership position in the A3 segment. The brand awareness for Volkswagen, which was only eight per cent in 2009, is currently at 44 per cent.
From a late entrant to a potential leader in a cluttered market, it wasn’t an easy task when Kothe took the reins of the Volkswagen brand in India in 2009. He has been the brain behind the brands’ much talked about print campaigns including the first road-block, the talking newspaper, the Polo hole, painting the newspapers blue for Think Blue or the Silver Jacket for Jetta.
Talking about the challenge for brand building as a late entrant into any market Kothe says, “It is simultaneously a risk and an opportunity. The risk is that as a newcomer you clearly have to understand the customer’s needs concerning rational and emotional as-pects and have to combine it with the profile of brand and product to create a relevant benefit for your customers without building on a brand heritage. The opportunity is that you can start with a blank sheet of paper and form the brand and product profiles while creating an aspirational world around it.”
Apart from Kothe, the key speakers of the Mumbai leg of the Pitch CMO Summit are: Chander Mohan Sethi, CMD, Reckitt Benckiser (Keynote Speaker); Anuradha Aggarwal, VP- Brand Communication and Insights, Vodafone Essar; Jawed Habib, CMD, Jawed Habib Hair and Beauty; Krishnadeep Baruah, Director Marketing, RIM India (BlackBerry); Sadashiv Nayak, Joint CEO, Future Value Retail; Sumit Sahay, Marketing Head, Infiniti Retail (Croma); besides others.
The key speakers of the Delhi leg of the summit are: Antonio Helio Waszyk, Chairman and MD of Nestlé India (Keynote Speaker); Sandeep Kaul, Head- Personal Care Division, ITC (Special Address); Christian Saffer, Marketing Director, BMW India; Elkana Ezekiel, CMO, Samsung India; Sandeep Kataria, CMO, Yum Restaurants; Sharmili Rajput, Marketing Director, Oriflame India; Srinivas Murthy, Director, Marketing (Flavours), Coca Cola India; Vidur Vyas, Marketing Director, PepsiCo India- Foods, besides others.
The key speakers of the Bangalore leg of the summit are: Neeraj Chandra, COO, Britannia Industries(Keynote Speaker); Amish Tripathi, Bestselling Author; Bhuwan Gaurav, Marketing Head, Tanishq; K Ramakrishnan, President Marketing, Café Coffee Day; Karthi Marshan, EVP and Head- Group Marketing, Kotak Mahindra Group; Nigel Wark, Executive Director of Marketing, Sales and Service, Ford India; Ravi Vora, Marketing Head, Flipkart.com; Shailendra Katyal, CMO, Lenovo; Sudip Ghose, Group Marketing Director, South Asia, Samsonite South Asia; besides others.