Muhammad Zaid A Hamid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR_UYx4vSPs&feature=youtu.beA reputable, distinguished brand in a particular industry is already linked to high quality of the goods that the firm produces. However, what elevates them to a higher level is the brand loyalty by their very own customers for years, decades even centuries, from generation to generation. To capture this element of loyalty, firms properly coordinate their marketing strategies through several methods such as promotions, loyalty membership cards and of course, advertisements as well. In fact, advertisements play a humongous role for the firms to obtain brand loyalty through visuals and audio that captivate the customers’ attention in a very effective way.
Globally, Volkswagen is a very well-known brand in the automobile industry for so many years, probably near to a century already. Ask any random stranger on the street and they would definitely know the Volkswagen Beetle, Passat, Jetta, and other models that this firm produces. Around the globe, across the seas, Volkswagen is the biggest German automaker as well as the third largest of that in the world. One of the key elements that this firm practices to obtain brand loyalty is through their brief, yet comprehensive advertisements. Before a new model is about to be launched or when there is rising competition in the market, Volkswagen will then display advertisements all around the globe, portraying to users about the undebatable top quality models that they produce.
One of the advertisements that captivated a huge number of customers was the Volkswagen Smiles Commercial that was published in September 2012. At that particular time, the automobile industry which is also an oligopoly market had a rising competition among the top carmakers and Volkswagen took it from the perspective of being different from the rest by publishing an advertisement that will attract their customers to stay loyal in a fun manner. This advertisement is about people from different generations, all laughing similarly in a very excited way. The appeal of ethos, pathos, and logos are used in this advertisement to correlate the Volkswagen brand and the ultimate satisfaction of its customers.
The advertisement kicked off with a baby laughing as if there was something really hilarious that prompted the laugh, followed by toddlers, kids, teenagers, adults and lastly, elderly people. Though all of the people that were featured in the advertisement were from different age groups, they all laughed and were featured to be extremely joyful. On top of that, these people were also from different ethnicities, displaying the variety of customers that Volkswagen already have and also set to venture more. The advertisement ended with a simple, yet comprehensive slogan, ‘It’s not the miles, it’s how you live them’.
Slogan is usually a brilliant method of making sure the customers remember the brand and the quality of the good produced. As a firm competing through non price competition, Volkswagen took the right step by creating a memorable slogan that would enable customers to always keep in mind regarding the brand and also the models that they produce. ‘It’s not the miles, it’s how you live them’ basically can be interpreted as owning a Volkswagen doesn’t only mean that the customers will be able to travel endless kilometers all around the globe, but it’s also about the happiness and joy that they obtain by travelling, maybe by meeting the loved ones, sharing their successes with friends and family in another country, or even just by driving down the road to see their neighbors that they haven’t talked for a long time. They all signify the satisfaction customers obtain by utilizing the goods they produce, thus creating a sense of brand loyalty among them.
In an industry where large firms produce high quality goods, customers will then pick the brand that they believe will be able