Saturday Star

VW remains in driver’s seat as the people’s car

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MY AUNT used to say, years ago when my children were small, that I would wish I could “just put a brick on top of them to stop them growing” – meaning that your kids become adults in the blink of an eye – and then you wish you had paid more attention when they were cute.

I was reminded of this again this week with the new ad for the Volkswagen Golf. It features a cute (hats off to the production company and casting agency) little girl who has so much attitude and energy, like the Golf, I suppose.

She is the life and the soul of the nursery school and is moved by rhythm, always jiving, always moving to the beat in her heart. Then dad comes to fetch her – in the new Golf, of course – and the musical party continues, courtesy of the great sound system in the car.

Dad turns up the music loud and the two of them share it – she playing “air drums” enthusiast­ically – as they go.

The ad works as a piece of marketing communicat­ion on a number of levels.

It showcases the car well – in its attractive shiny metallic paint – and highlights its features (such as the sound system).

But it yet again underlines VW’s place in the market as the true “people’s car”, because, first and foremost, the company’s products are the soundtrack­s to the lives of many people. I know, I owned a much-loved VW Jetta for 24 years.

It also shows that part of a family’s life is all so simple – when there is so much love, for life, for each other and, most of all, for the VW parked in the garage.

Another Orchid for VW and its agency, Ogilvy. It won’t be the last, I’m sure.

Last week, I was in London for a conference hosted by business consulting giant Accenture on “Millennial­s”.

I was a bit wary because seldom has so much guff been talked about a “marketing demographi­c” than about these people – born after 1981.

Supposedly, they are a new generation, which looks at marketing and advertisin­g – and the whole way they live and interact with each other – from a totally different perspectiv­e. I was expecting to be swamped with waves of rubbish about them, but was pleasantly surprised when this was not the case.

Accenture showed many examples of harnessing technology to improve business and reach customers – both Millennial­s and non-Millennial­s.

Interestin­gly, someone from BBC Worldwide’s sales team shared their research which shows that – surprise, surprise – 60% of Millennial­s share the same attitudes and values towards life and towards marketing as do non-Millennial­s. And, of that remaining 40%, the real marketing target (that is, those with money) for companies like BBC Worldwide, is surprising­ly small.

However, I did find one Millennial company which did annoy me simply because it employed that age-old marketing technique of misleading customers.

The organisati­on, taboola.com, promises to promote your website content across a range of publishers worldwide, “for as little as $10 ( (about R133)”, according to its own site.

That sounded quite reasonable, so I looked further.

Only much further down – after much scrolling through the huge benefits of the product – did I discover the reality.

That $10 is actually $10 a day. Quite a big difference. New tech, old smoke and mirrors. An Onion for taboola.com

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