Midlife Crisis Retreat
Challenge
Passat drivers are middle-class men in their 40s/50s who are starting to feel marginalised by a society of SMS’ing teenagers and reality TV. For men of this age, ‘fluff and nonsense’ is often most apparent in those who succumb to the dreaded Midlife Crisis. The core creative idea for the whole campaign is cantered on this phenomenon.
Solution
We created a fictional clinic called ‘The Retreat’, www.midlife-crisis-retreat.co.uk, a place where men can be cured of their midlife crisis leaving them free to appreciate the understated style and integrity of a Passat. We created four ad executions that extended the idea of men battling midlife crisis tendencies.
Personalisation was also a key feature of the digital part of this campaign. We created a personalised MPU for users to input a friend’s name, age and midlife crisis symptoms. They then received a personalised film from our midlife crisis consultant, Dr Vincent Weybridge. Viral videos showed various scenarios with the midlife-crisis-struck victims.
Impact
In just ten weeks the campaign generated:
- Over 9 million interactions with and nearly 5 million replays of the video ads
- 156,000 unique visitors to the micro site and 187,000 views of the ‘Self Diagnosis Test’
- 5,477 “Recommend a patient” emails sent, 4,783 viewings of personalised videos
- 80% of users had a positive opinion of the micro site with 83% agreeing it “made its points in a clever way”*
- 57% of visitors agreed “it made Volkswagen seem more appealing”*
- 49% agreed “it encouraged me to take a closer look at the Volkswagen Passat”*
*Source: Metrixlab Website Profile Monitor Survey
