Tales Of The Touareg And Other Adventure

Branding Information
Tales of the Touareg and other adventures in branding


by:
Charles Warnock


You’re not likely to see a Volkswagen in the winner’s circle at Daytona or Indianapolis. But if there were competition called the Brand-Building 500, you would find a Volkswagen in the winner’s circle, year after year. Everyone knows the touchstones of branding – creating value, consistency, visibility and loyalty. However, like auto racing, these fundamentals are easy to talk about, but a little more challenging to execute. Nearly anyone can steer a car around a track. But winning consistently against fierce competition in a variety of locations and conditions requires considerable skill. Few companies are more skilled than Volkswagen at building customer loyalty. Owners become emotionally invested in their cars, invent pet names for them and treat them like extended family members. In addition to automobile devotees, the company has many more admirers who are fans of the brand. Their irreverent image and clever television ad campaigns speak to young buyers today with a message that’s consistent with the one used to sell Bugs to their parents 30 years ago. If you’re a hip, free-spirited kind of person who wants a car with personality, come join us. Among marketers, the company’s promotional prowess is legendary: The last original VW Bug, forerunner of today’s modernized Beetle, rolled off the production line in 2003 – the last of 21,529,464 sold worldwide since the 1930s. In addition to dozens of Bug restoration and repair books, several compilations of VW’s popular print ads have been published. A “Transparent Factory” in Dresden, Germany features glass walls that enable residents to witness the manufacture of VW luxury sedans. Finished vehicles are displayed in a glass tower before being delivered to their new owners. In 1973-74, the company sold 30,000 VW “Things” – a re-badged German military vehicle that looks very much like the offspring of a jeep and a dumpster – to enthusiastic U.S. buyers. In fact, even as Europe’s largest automaker, VW has been successful in defining a sort of exclusive club for younger, educated drivers. Many of these buyers start with a Jetta or a Beetle before moving on to the company’s more luxurious offerings. And now comes the Touareg, VW’s entry into the luxury SUV market. Touareg is apparently a first-rate SUV with what USA Today calls “style, grace and growl.” But Touareg? Come on. Passat is an odd name, but “Touareg” sounds like something that needs calamine lotion. Worship me or diePerhaps Touareg has some poetic meaning in Slovakia, where it is built. Or perhaps the industry is simply running out of good car names. It’s a good bet that if you looked through enough sci-fi novels, you would encounter an evil warlord called Touareg the Terrible who aims to enslave a galaxy or kidnap a lovely Empress. What’s next? Ming the Mercury? The Plymouth Vader? On the other hand, a “Worship Me or Die!” ad campaign for the Touareg would be a refreshing change of pace from those friendly, self-deprecating Beetle commercials. On the plus side, it’s a pretty safe bet that Touareg doesn’t mean “won’t go” in Spanish and won’t offend Wiccans, Jaycees or the Saharan nomads the vehicle is said to be named for. But VW could have accomplished that by calling it the Type 181, which is what the Thing was called during its hitch in the military. Perhaps Volkswagen thought that all the good rugged locale names, like Tahoe and the Santa Fe, were taken. The VW “Peoria” or “Levittowner” just wouldn’t have the same caché. Likewise, many of the good predatory animal names are already taken. Some of the best mythical beasts, like the Thunderbird and Phoenix are also spoken for. Few people would be willing to take on a 60-month loan for a GMC Grackle, Mitsubishi Gerbil or Toyota Trout. Perhaps automakers can enter brand partnerships with corporate sponsors, as some sports and entertainment facilities have done. The introduction of a Nissan Nike or Plymouth Viagra may not cause much of a stir at this point. With bland brands like Vitara, Spectra, Elantra and Optima becoming more common, one could assume that there are even worse nameplates yet to come. In just a few years, all the good brand names could be taken and we’ll begin to see automakers settling for second-tier names: 15: Volvo Vanilla14.Nissan Eeyore 13. Oldsmobile Earlybird12.Lincoln Pimpmobile11. Chevrolet Groin10.Kia Uvula9. Pontiac Schmontiac8. BMW Strudel7. Subaru Musty6.Honda Pretense5. Isuzu Achoo4. VW Vin Diesel3. Mercury Mongrel2. Plymouth Scrota1. Hyundai Albundai (for drivers who are married with children) Another possibility is for automakers to trade on the success of celebrities who have already built winning brands. I would expect that the Cadillac Sinatra would be popular with both older buyers and younger fans of the legendary singer. The Mazda Beyonce would be sleek, fun to drive, have a great sound system and a built-in celebrity endorsement. And it’s hard to imagine that a limited Elvis or Earnhardt edition of any pickup truck wouldn’t drive sales in the South. Passat? Bless you!Elvis and evil warlords aside, the bottom line is brand equity, and it doesn’t really matter whether Touareg is a successful sub-branding strategy. Even if individual VW models have names that sound like a sneeze or a rash, buyers seem to focus on the magic of the corporate brand. Mere marketing mortals should probably assume that VW’s positioning, promotion and publicity formula for the Touareg is on target. The vehicle probably will garner its own cult following, and Touareg clubs, meetings and Web pages will follow. But it’s not because of the name. It’s because the company has consistently excelled in developing the awareness, recognition and loyalty necessary to build a premium brand. After all, any company that has taken the purchasing decision from “Which car should I buy?” to “Which VW should I buy?” deserves the checkered flag. About the Author
Charles Warnock is Director of BusinessTechKnowledge Inc., a South Florida firm specializing in marketing and technical communications, e-business and corporate training. Charles can be reached at cw@businesstechknowledge.com. This article can be freely reproduced with author's bio and contact information.








©2005 - Presented by : http://homeincomeportal.com/mystory

Monetized Passive Adsense Income Websites

Limited Spots Avaliable. Space on our network for Adsense Income Websites Installation are limited. We can only fill 73  vacant spots on our network, therefore only 73 spots for  Adsense Income Empire Websites  is now open for subscription.

Build an Explosive Home Income with 106 Optimised Adsense Websites Located on 106 Domains across the World.

Everything is done for you.

Welcome to my Worldwide Adsense Income Portal.

Your Adsense Income will explode from these 106 Adsense Income Portals Worldwide that is installed for you.

No Hype, No Selling, just the plain facts you can see and experience. Your Adsense Income Websites are all Static Pages, (Search Engines love static pages) and they are located on 106 Domains on our Network, with Dynamic Unique Content and Live Keywords. Yes, we install for you 106 Websites all optimized to start building your Income 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Nothing For You To Do !!

Your Adsense Monetized Websites will build Income for you passively, due to the Magic of Google Adsense Infrastructure, we simply build, install and Host all 106 Websites for you on our Network.

Live Keywords

 Autobots grab keyword searches Live  from billions of search boxes as they are entered, and stuff them into your static pages.

You can see my  Worldwide Adsense Income Installation by clicking here. As you can see, with all these  Adsense Websites are hosted on dedicated independent servers and domains, on independent data centers all over the world. Instant presence, passive income generation, and hosted Live 24/7. Can anything stop you from exploding your Income from Home.

We have constructed State Of The Art RSS, Adsense Embedded Portals with Dynamic Content on Static Pages.

Since Search Engines love Static Pages, Your Adsense Monetized Websites are STATIC, embedded with Full Multi Dimentional Content.

You have 106 Full Websites on 106 Domains selling fulltime, hosted live on data centers across the globe.

Limited Spots Avaliable

Space on our network for Adsense Income Websites Installation are limited. We can only fill 73  vacant spots on our network, therefore only 73 spots for  Adsense Income Empire Websites  is now open for subscription.

After that, we will close subscriptions.

Nothing For You To Do ...

Every Website is installed manually for you, it takes 3 hours to install each of them, and server space on the Network is Limited.

Each Of Your Website costs in excess of $ 3,000 dollars in manpower direct cost, and we are exploding 106 of them just for you. Each of your Adsense Monetized Websites now have 5 levels of Dynamic Content.

You can instantly have an Adsense Monetized Website building Income for you passively with this installation.

Go ahead, click on any Continent in the World, and I have an Adsense Monetized Website selling Full Time For me. Every Website is a Full Retail Outlet, earning me a Full Time Income 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - 365 days a year.

Phase I - Live Dynamic RSS FEEDS. (See Above.) Top Sports Stories and Sports Headlines. The latest sports news from the most popular sporting events. This will have the Spiders crawling your Adsense Pages.

PHASE II - Direct Private Dynamic Content Pool, drawing from a content pool of 450,000 content data pools, covering every hot subject that is searched on the internet. Articles, recipes,jokes,famous quotes with more relevant and researched topics added daily. Refresh The Page, and your Private Autobot changes Title,Keyword, Category, Content.

Phase III - Dynamic Keywords. Your Satellite Portal is now drawing from a Dynamic Keyword Pool. You are competing with daily researched Keywords of Fully relevant Searched Keywords LIVE.

In other words, 106 surfers somewhere in the world are searching for something and 106 of your Portals is instantly carrying their specific Keyword Dynamically on your portal online.

PHASE IV - Dynamic Live Categories. Your Satellite Portals have Live Dynamic Categories that is embedded within your Static Pages.

PHASE V - Google Sitemaps. Everyone of Your 106  Adsense Monetized Websites are all sitemapped and is now a part of your Permanent Marketing Infrastructure.

This is a Permanent Infrastructure, and will develop a growing income for you. Google will have all your Pages crawled and indexed from these sitemaps.

Your Google Ads are setup on all 106 Satellite Portals. Once your Adsense Ads are crawled by Google, it will start displaying.

With 100 Million Buyers daily on the internet, we have built for you the Broadest NETWORK of Adsense Monetized Websites.

We are working to bring each of your Satellite Portals to the very Top of The Google Rankings, and generate Similar Results on all 60 other Search Engines Worldwide.

SUBSCRIBE  HERE