Daily Archives: May 8, 2007

Audi Rings the Bell

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Audi is launching a new advertising campaign using San Francisco’s Venables, Bell and Partners. I saw an Audi TT ad last night and hadn’t a clue what it was all about. Good thing I read the newspaper this morning. Apparently the Audi TT, a very cool car, is so fast the agency shrunk all of its features and beauty shots into a 2 second segment, which must be viewed using a DVR in slow motion. The whole spot is :15 and thoroughly unintelligible.

 
It’s no wonder the ad was a slurry of creativity; the strategy was unfocused.  If you follow Audi’s new marketing executive, Scott Keogh, whose explanatory quote in today’s Wall Street Journal, was “We are putting our foot in the ground and saying this is who we are,” I’m betting we are in for one long strange Audi trip.
 
What’s the idea? I’m not really sure. The new tagline is “Truth in Engineering,” which as any marketing student knows is every German company’s strategy. And though impressive engineering can be a strategy, from everything I’ve read and seen so far this campaign is all tactics with not even a hint of an idea. Stay tuned.