By ANINDITA SARKAR
Indiantelevision.com Team

(9 March 2010 11:10 am)

MUMBAI: Aimed at driving deep into the Indian consumer minds, Volkswagen teamed up with the country's leading English newspaper to come out with an innovative method of advertising for its Polo brand.

The German automobile major initiated a special edition of The Times of India (TOI) on 8 March that flaunted a neat cutout of the premium hatchback brand just below the masthead.

Interestingly, the special edition (a supplement) of 16 pages carries the main edition inside wherein the cutout fits the Polo brand finely into it. A full page ad of the car featured on the last page. Its final message: "We've put a lot into it. You'll get even more out of it."

With DDB Mudra as its creative partner and MediaCom as the media agency, the new product from the Volkswagen stable targets the 25-40-year-olds.

Says Volkswagen chief general manager marketing Lutz Kothe, “With the new Polo just foraying into India, we wanted to create an impactful campaign that would make Indians talk not just about the product but also the brand. Also, since we wanted to target the mid-social class of India including young entrepreneurs, we decided to join hands with TOI.”

Talking about the creative idea behind the campaign, Mudra chief creative officer Bobby Pawar said, “Through this campaign, we wanted to capture people’s imagination with the idea that no other car can fit into the brand attributes other than Polo.”

Kothe further reveals that since the company started the Polo sales in dealerships, they decided to conduct the campaign on this day.

According to a company spokesperson, the TOI campaign is part of Volkswagen’s 360 degree initiative for Polo in the Indian subcontinent. This will include televison, out-of-home and digital media.

Talking about the company’s sales strategy for India, the spokesperson said, “We follow a top down strategy for India. Thus, we began with the niche products targeting the niche segments and then came down to volume products.”

Last year, TOI had created the first print roadblock for Volkswagen across its 11 November edition. As part of the roadblock, all Volkswagen brands including Jetta, Passat and Touareg had been advertised on all editions of TOI for that day.