Audi Launching the Challenge to Old Luxury

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1 Audi Launching the Challenge to Old Luxury Context: Audi is a Challenger in the US and became very interested in the work of eatbigfish when Adam addressed their National Sales event in The Challenge: The Audi A8 was due to launch in the US with an audacious goal to double previous sales in the most prestigious segment of the auto industry. If Audi was going to become a true contender in the D Segment it had to break into The Rule of 3, something no brand had managed to do since Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Lexus established their dominance. This launch would have to approached as no other before it in the history of Audi of America. The Process: In 2009, Audi brought in eatbigfish to help apply Challenger principles to every single touch-point of the sales and service experience. Working with a cross functional team from sales, service, forecasting, design, training, and marketing, Audi redefined the entire prospecting, sales and service experience, setting a new standard that would deposition the Old Luxury marques around them. The Breakthrough: Working together in this way for the first time, the Herndon team built real confidence in their ability to compete with the big three. Along with a more direct attack on its rival Mercedes-Benz, unheard of in the Luxury category, the team created eight signature moments of the A8 experience and rolled them out to Audi Flagship dealers across the country. The world was left with no doubt that the A8 meant business.

2 Audi Launching the Challenge to Old Luxury The Results: Doubled share of luxury segment. Triple digit increase in purchase intent. Increased av transaction price per vehicle over previous years. The most impact eatbigfish had [at Audi] is with the workshops. In some environments when you have extremely senior executives, when you have dealers, it s very difficult for someone within the machine, to either criticise, offer suggestions, offer different point of views, it s so much more impactful when it comes from a third party. And when it s a third party with a degree of credibility it has even more impact, and to me that s been the biggest assist in terms of keeping our challenger strategy moving forward. Scott Keogh, CEO Audi of America

3 Walkers Making Walkers Irresistable Again The Challenge: In the 10 years before 2008 the Walkers brand had become the nation s favourite crisp and in so doing one of the country s largest and most powerful brands. But in 2005 it was confronted by negative headlines related to obesity that made the brand the poster-boy for unhealthy living. The model that had driven commercial success began to unravel and confidence in the brand slipped. Walkers began a significant haul of their ingredient sourcing and quality controls and at a purely rational level, addressed many of the issues that it had been criticised for. But the brand team had lost a huge amount of confidence, and the brand had lost its lustre. It was fast losing its place as the nation s favourite brand. Walkers was looking for a way to chart a new path to success, build confidence within the brand team, and identify new behaviours that could lead it to renewed growth. The Process: At the start of 2008, Walkers embarked on the full Challenger Lighthouse Identity process, bringing together people both internally and across all their agencies in order to collaborate on a future path for growth. Recognising that strategies and ideas inform each other, the process considered the two strands in parallel so that the teams are able to return to the organisation with tangible ideas to execute. The Breakthrough: Perhaps unsurprisingly Walkers time in the glare of the health and wellness spotlight had made them turn away from the real reason people buy Walkers crisps: they are simply irresistible. They had been in denial of this truth for nearly three years. Through this process we were able to start again and rekindle belief in the product and the team so that they felt comfortable talking up this truth again. They needed an objective third party to help them see this. As important as the message was a realisation that they had become predictable in the way that they marketed Walkers over-reliant on TV and a marketing model from the early 90s. The tactics needed a radical overhaul. After much soul searching they recommitted to their relationship with Gary Lineker, but used him in many different ways and diverse media. The campaign that best illustrated the convergence of all this thinking was the Do Us a Flavour Campaign.

4 Walkers Making Walkers Irresistible Again The Results: Do Us a Flavour was an enormous success for Walkers, both in terms of what was delivered through the business, but also in the belief it generated. Do Us a Flavour captured the nation s imagination and got them talking about Walkers again. Sales up by 12%. 1.5 million entries. 6.5m of free PR. Penetration up. Quality scores up. Collaboration and engagement around the process also boosted internal belief, and helped the team see that they can influence the way the company works. Today, Walkers is still doing fantastically. Walkers Crinkles was launched in 2011, and became the number one food & drink launch that year and is already projected to be a 50m business. One of the big strengths of the eatbigfish process is the fact that it s highly collaborative, so you really can engage multiple people, both across the agencies, and internally. When you need to get a lot of people engaged behind a future path of growth getting different people internally, from different functions and agencies all together in a collaborative process really helped with that. The second thing that really helped was the belief that strategies and ideas can run in parallel, and actually, you need them together, because they inform each other. And I found that incredibly valuable, because it meant that we could shape the output, and make sure that what we were creating was really workable. Miranda Samples, Former Marketing Director - Walkers

5 Lark - Working with a Startup to Wake Up the Category Context Lark was a Silicon Valley start-up working on start-up funding. It s a gadget that tracks your sleep patterns and habits, and wakes you through vibration. eatbigfish were asked to help develop a Challenger story and marketing ideas that could help Lark punch above its weight and create fame, particularly at its unveiling at Tech Crunch in The Challenge: Lark was a gadget that would be launched amid a sea of ultra cool tech gadgets with a product that addressed sleepy old sleep. The challenge was two-fold: How to breakthrough in a 15 minute stage presentation; and, more importantly, how to present sleep as something worthy of maintaining the world s attention after the initial spike in interest. The Process: eatbigfish brought all the small Lark team together to develop the larger Challenger Strategy for the brand, and with some help from the MBA Program at Stanford, met on a weekly basis to roll up sleeves to do market research, devise launch stunts, concept demo films, even write pack copy. It was all hands on deck. The Breakthrough: Together we reframed Lark as much more than a silent alarm clock, but as a powerful secret weapon to improving performance and overall quality of life; an idea easily as powerful as nutrition and exercise and a must-have for everyone from the top performing tech exec to the uber-efficient working mom. We presented Lark as The Visionary Challenger, a brand with a whole new way of thinking about and evaluating that mysterious part of your life when you are asleep.

6 Lark - Working with a Startup to Wake Up the Category The Results: While all other MBAs launched their start-up with PowerPoint, we had Julia smash an alarm clock with a sledgehammer generating headlines across the blogosphere Apple took on Lark in a regional test and after success as now rolled out the product into all its Apple stores internationally. Founder Julia Hu has been voted Young Female Entrepreneur of the Year in Marie Claire The product has received an endorsement from the National Sleep Foundation Fast Company have named them one of the Top Ten Most Innovative Companies in the World in consumer electronics. It was so important to get the team bought in, to get the sleep experts really bought in to the dream. And that dream was values-driven and it was about something everyone could relate to. So there were these great moments of a-ha! and team collaboration and just excitement that we were all pushing for a greater purpose in life. So that s what really helped us come out with our product in less than a year, which launched internationally with Apple into every single store. I think every part of that experience was linked to those initial ideation moments with eatbigfish. Julia Hu, Founder Lark