Title	POLOSA CHUDES
Brand	VOLKSWAGEN
Product/Service	VOLKSWAGEN POLO
Category	D02. Use of Branded Content created for Digital or Social
Entrant	PHD Moscow, RUSSIA
Idea Creation	PHD Moscow, RUSSIA
Idea Creation 2	FUSE Moscow, RUSSIA
Media Placement	PHD Moscow, RUSSIA
Production	FUSE Moscow, RUSSIA

Name	Company	Position
Diana Korobeinikova	Volkswagen Russia	Media Manager
Emma Trifonova	Volkswagen Russia	BTL manager
Kirill Artemiev	PHD	Account Director
Ekaterina Kamzolkina	PHD	Media Group Head
Daria Paroshina	PHD	Digital Group Head
Anna Babanova	PHD	Media Director
Olga Korabelnikova	Fuse Media Direction	Director
Anastasia Bossert	Fuse Media Direction	Group Head

Why is this work relevant for Media?

By confronting young people’s negative perceptions of Volkswagen’s Polo head on, and innovating our entire media campaign to include non-explicit direct advertising, we were able to expand the client audience and attract attention to the Polo model in Russia.

Background

Polo is a key model in Volkswagen's portfolio in the Russian market. For many years, Polo has steadily increased its market share, but it has never been a segment leader. Over 10 years of presence in Russia, Polo has gained the trust of an adult audience that values quality and reliability. However, the customer’s average age was over 40 years old, which no longer corresponded to the image of the updated Polo and seriously limited the model’s potential market. Polo’s perception among young people has always been in a negative zone compared to its main competitors. After the large-scale update of Polo in 2020, we were faced with the task of expanding the audience of clients by attracting young people without losing the model’s current loyal audience.

Describe the creative idea / insights (30% of vote)

Digital plays a significant role in communicating with a young audience. However, for them to see the new Polo as an ‘object of desire’, it is not enough to simply integrate advertising into a popular video on YouTube or place a promo post on social networks. We needed a bright project, without explicit direct advertising. We revised YouTube TOP-trends and chose ‘Chicken Curry’ as a partner, whose projects regularly gain millions of views. In partnership with Chicken Curry we developed a video in which the car became the main character of the story. To strengthen the virality of the video, internet sensation, Dmitry Krasilov, was brought on board. Krasilov, also known as Puhlyash, shot to fame as a dancer on Little Big’s song Uno,

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

The focus was on Young adults (25–34 years old), who belong to the modern generation of consumers who not only value the quality of cars, but also ergonomics, bright appearance, technology and innovation. It was decided to place the video clip before the start of full-scale media activity in support of the new Polo. The project became a teaser for the main advertising campaign and served as a catalyst for the attention of a young audience. This approach provided increased attention to the new Polo throughout the entire period of media support for the model.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

We created a viral video clip instead of the standard OLV campaign. To maximize organic reach and native teasing, the video was originally posted only on the Chicken Curry channel. After organic traffic began to slow down growth, paid promotion tools were activated – seeding in thematic publics and support with advertising formats in social networks and on YouTube. The target audience was divided into two segments, and depending on which, unique targeting and a list of communities for seeding were formed: 1. The most targeted users interested in sedans, Volkswagen brand and competitors. 2. A wider audience for which the video might be relevant. In this case, it was users interested in entertainment and travel. When forming the budget, we relied on statistics on the consumption of selected resources by our audience and based on the calculation of capacities for selected targeting and bid analysis.

List the results (30% of vote)

As a result of bright communication, organic traffic on the site of the new Volkswagen Polo increased by 120%, and by 69% for the audience 25–34. The average monthly volume of search queries about the new Polo in Yandex has grown 2.4 times since the start of activities. Due to the high virality of the video, we received more than 13 million views across all digital channels, which is 2.5 times higher than the average for product videos. The cost per view of the video on YouTube was 44% lower than the average for model campaigns. On the Chicken Curry YouTube channel, our video organically collected 13,000 likes and a lot of positive comments. And the official Volkswagen Russia YouTube channel has more than 1,200 likes, which is 10 times higher than the average value for product videos on the brand's channel.