Circumstantial marketing or Volkswagen V/s BIC

In the light of a couple recent campaigns I’ve stumbled upon, I find this is a good opportunity to discuss contextual, or rather “circumstantial marketing”, if you will.

Meaning:

A brand, any brand, obviously ought to take into consideration the context, or circumstances surrounding its customers’ consumption patterns and adapt its message accordingly, that’s a given.

Now, the cursor can go from simply adapting to circumstances, all the way to exploiting them, or rather exploiting the consumer insights deriving from the overall environment surrounding them.

Illustrating:

Today’s big picture is the worldwide recession, businesses going bankrupt, people getting laid off, and the whole tragedy around it. Implying, naturally, a decrease in disposable income and purchasing power of consumers of practically all social classes (Thank god we still have a few billionaires around). And brands have to adapt. Which is why you’ll notice a clear shift in trend towards “price-driven”, or “value-driven” communication, from actors of all industries, whether mass retailers or auto makers, regardless of their previous or permanent positioning (In Paris, for example, you can witness outdoors ads for Lexus, a highly premium brand, with “cheap monthly payment” as the sole selling point of the campaign, almost hiding the actual product).

THAT IS: ADAPTING TO CIRCUMSTANCES.

Now, following this, came the whole story of “golden parachutes”, and spread around the world contempt and despise towards big bosses and investment bankers. In france, more than anywhere else (naturally).

Two brands decided to EXPLOIT rather than adapt, namely Bic and Volkswagen.

Here are the two videos:

Now, the insight is rather simple. surfing on the wave of trader-hatred, sure, why not? Doesn’t really matter whether there are any rational grounds or basis for it, as long as everyone agrees on it.

VW’s campaign: 4 steps to successfully exploiting context

1- reactivity: the campaign was launched on TV as early as November 2008, early stage of the crisis.

2- originality: They were the first to move in on this trend, and they did it well.

3- Coherence: The tagline reads “en temps de crise, mieux vaut se tourner vers les valeurs sûres” (translate: “in times of crisis, better to fall back on safe values”). And establishing “safe values” is exactly the positioning VW’s been trying to achieve throughout global European strategy for the past few years. (here are a few spots illustrating my point 1, 2, 3). Moreover, The song came after a saga of “traders anonymous”, which you can find here (in French, but explicit enough for English speakers to understand)

4- A good execution: Even I, who contests the whole, unwarranted banker-hating trend, have to admit the spots work, they’re entertaining and the direction and execution are more than decent.

Beyond that, I will have to deplore the lack of online relay, while they obviously could’ve come up with some creative stuff around the idea. But overall, bravo!

Moving on to Bic’s campaign:

1- Reactivity: seriously? June 2009? almost a year after the first events? 9 months after the first airing of VW’s, and while their commercial is still airing?

2- Originality: You can always steal an idea, if you believe you can bring added elements or added value within the execution. But trying to reproduce the campaign with, what seems to be, not more than quarter the production budget (probably less) and zero media budget is simply absurd.

3- Coherence: While VW’s use of the trend fits well with their tagline and the global positioning strategy, Bic struggles to create an analogy between greed for money and greed for number of blades on a rasor, while the featured product is their rasor with the highest number of blades 🙂

4- Execution: Both the spots and the song are neither fun, nor entertaining, nor provide any relevance between traders and rasors.

The thing is, surfing on a societal trend can, in no way, be an end in itself.

Beyond that, VW’s budget for this campaign was huge. TVC’s all over. In every scenario possible, Bic’s version would’ve been a pale copy.

I’d like to find out how the agency sold that, or how client bought it.

In conclusion, exploiting a trend works if you’re serving a more global positioning, it works if you can create a coherence with your brand identity, and it works if you move quickly enough to create association between the trend and your surfing on it.

P.S.: Not included in the analysis is this spot for Euromillions, strangely similar, but dating of 2004, losing of its relevance here.

I would love your comments on this, both the campaigns and my analysis. don’t hesitate!!