Volkswagen: Branding, planning and all that jazz

Car manufacturer Volkswagen used a multichannel approach with a nod to past campaign themes to reverse declining sales in the UK.

"Jazz," Nina Simone once said, "is not just music, it is a way of thinking."

One of the key roles of planning is to 'distil' a brand; to find its 'essence' and then capture it and lock it in words. The finalised 'brand on-a-page' being the pinnacle of success. But what if there was a different, less prescriptive way to shape and manage a brand? For over 60 years Volkswagen has eschewed the rigidity of the written one-pager in favour of a more unscripted (and freer) method of keeping its story alive - a method founded on the principles of...

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