David George is the somewhat dapper head of marketing for Volkswagon Commercial Vehicles. A polished and composed marketer – he is aptly suited to the natty showroom that we find ourselves chatting in. Throughout the interview, he exudes an easy confidence and a laid back air, but he never lets his professional guard down, the conversation sticking to business at all times. Still business is pretty cool when you’re surrounded by an iconic automotive brand like VW.
George has been part of the VW Group (the group incorporates VW, Audi, Seat, Skoda, VW Commercial Vehicles, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini and Scania) for 12 years. In this time, he has taken on a range of sales, communications and marketing roles for Audi and VW, before being appointed his current role for VW Commercial Vehicles (VWCV) last year. George’s relatively quick and successful progression in various roles at VW are evidence of not only his passion for the brand but also the organisation’s attitude about how the business functions.
“What’s brilliant about the VW Group, is the way that it develops you in a number of areas. It gives you the opportunity to explore the aspects of the business that you might not get in other organisations.” He continues, “To get right to the top of the VW business, you need to have had a broad breadth of experience.”
Driving passion
George will never be short of experience if VWCV’s ambitious future plans are anything to go by. Over the next year, the brand will have launched several new models, including a limited edition sports line van, continued its sponsorship of the Discovery Network and celebrated the 60th anniversary of its Transporter Van. George reveals that as a result his marketing team is “Buzzing. By the mid-part of next year, we’ll have the freshest line-up of products in the market place. It’s hugely exciting,” he says, adding, “passion for the VW van brand gets under your skin.”
Spreading brand passion for VW vans seems George’s number one mission, though he’s got an extremely wide audience spectrum to reach. Like many B2B brands, it’s difficult for VWCV to always pinpoint customer sectors and demographics because they vary so much. “We’re dealing with everyone from the single van purchaser – like gardeners, builders, chauffeurs and personal trainers – who use their vans for business in the week but for personal use on the weekends, to massive multinationals running 1000 vehicles. And everything that comes in between,” reveals George.
As a result of the brand’s wide-ranging customer base, George points out that different marketing channels and messages are key in order to ensure a tailored and relevant message to customers, “A message about the value for money of the contract hire rates and back-end value of a VW van is hugely relevant for a single van purchaser, but far less so for larger corporations,” he says.
Channel routes
One of the key messages that George says VWCV aims to disseminate is that VW vans are exciting. Yet despite VW being perceived as a cool and ever-popular brand (who doesn’t love the idea of a summer spent touring coast-to-coast in the iconic camper van or tearing down the road ‘Herbie’ style?) social media activity for VWCV has been relatively slow to take off.
“In business-to-business, we haven’t seen a huge deal of success [with social media],” admits George, recognising that this is a common issue in the B2B arena, and yet something that VWCV “must embrace”. Indeed, George sees the huge opportunities that the channel presents, particularly among the brand’s individual van purchasers who are ultimately more receptive to social media. However, if the success of a recent poster campaign is anything to go by (VWCV invited customers to email them a photo of their van that then appeared on a promotional poster), the brand, at least, appears to be on the right track with social media – it may just need to rev up a couple of gears.
One area in which VWCV does seem to be having much more tangible success with is its recent sponsorship of the Discovery Channel. While radio forms a core part of VWCV’s media strategy, this is only the third time that the brand has engaged with TV sponsorship (it sponsored the same network channel last year and had other TV activity a few years prior to that). As well as the Discovery Channel brand being “bang in line with the demographic of VWCV’s business audience”, it’s also an effective way of reaching a wider customer base, again particularly among individual van purchasers. George explains that this is because TV allows VWCV to reach individual fleet customers outside of a business context, admitting, “Trying to reach all those people through DM is almost impossible.”
DM is, however, still a channel that VWCV relies on for other campaigns. George reveals that DM will play a key part in continuing to run the ‘Evolution of van’ campaign, launched earlier this year. The campaign celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Transporter Van, commemorating both the product’s heritage and reputation. Campaign creative shows images of the van’s earlier models, such as the iconic camper van, evolving through to more modern models.
It’s clear that George’s passion for the brand stems as much from its history as it does from its visions for the future. “I could talk to your for days about the heritage of the camper van,” he admits before revealing that his ultimate vision for the VWCV brand is to “make vans sexy”. He loves the fact that some VWCV customers pimp up their vans adding leather seats, spoilers and alloy wheels. Perhaps if this marketer had his way, the next TV sponsorship would be with MTV?
