Me, Myself and I: How VW China Has Tapped into Language, Pop Culture and a Hunger for Self-Expression
In the West, Volkswagen is one of those brands that is laden with history and heritage, from its roots in Germany to its paradigm-shifting advertising of the 1960s. But in China, one of VW’s most significant markets, all that baggage means little to savvy, stylish Gen Z and Millennial drivers. And so with the flagship electric vehicle the VW ID., creative agency Cheil China has been building a brand that is both undeniably contemporary and undeniably Chinese.
‘It Starts with Me’ is a creative campaign that launched in late 2020. At the core is a clever new symbol for the VW ID. that combines clever design and the construction of the written Chinese language. A logo of sorts, it draws from the VW ID. letters in the Roman alphabet and also the shape and structure of the Chinese ‘hanzi’ or character. It fuses the Chinese character ‘我’, which means ‘I or me’ with the Latin letters of ID. - immediately conveying a sense of self expression and individualism.
It’s a play on language that goes far beyond ‘tone of voice’ or pinging off local slang. And as a creative endeavour it goes beyond a simple one-off campaign or branding exercise. It’s also something that’s been created to chime with a younger generation that wants to express its individuality and identity. The logograph has been designed to transcend platforms, and live on social media, and to pop up throughout pop culture.
Malcolm Poynton, Cheil WW’s global chief creative officer explains that the brand’s long-term success in the Chinese market was ironically creating a barrier for it reaching the younger generation. VW entered the Chinese market in the early ‘80s with a partnership, and has become ubiquitous, trusted and safe.
“Being one of the first Western auto brands in China, VW has built a strong legacy of being reliable and trusted. And it’s no surprise since pretty much every taxi I can remember catching in China from the early ‘90s onwards has been a VW Santana. When a brand has such a powerful legacy in establishing such a cultural shift for transport modes within local culture, there’s a huge responsibility to ensure the brand stays relevant,” explains Malcolm of the context behind this project.
“Having helped establish the modern auto industry in China, VW has a strong position as market leader. The flip side is, with that position a new, younger generation’s perception soon follows – one that usually sees your brand as being for ‘your dad’s generation’. (Remember the Jeremy Clarkson effect on Levi’s – I don’t think the brand has ever recovered.) So, while the legacy perception is unrivalled, we’ve been focussed on also building a fresh new, future-facing and relatable contemporary image for the brand.”
And so the ID. launch was created to embrace the values of China’s next generation of car buyers. If their parents were part of China’s economic boom and focused on a transformation in material wealth, this new generation is, according to Malcolm, “environmentally conscious, future-facing, bold and expressive. Today’s generation is defined by a significant shift in ‘self-identity’ and a desire to shape who they are as individuals.”
The VW ID.’s personalisation and customisation options certainly feed into that appetite for self expression – and as Malcolm notes, that desire is something that brands across sectors have tuned into with great success. He points to China’s electronics brand Xiaomi who became a popular domestic brand after offering endless options of product specs and design. “It’s like the floodgates have suddenly opened up and this generation have had a taste of self-expression and now their appetite keeps growing.”
Digging into the creative nitty gritty, it’s been a fascinating project from a design perspective as well as from cultural and linguistic and technological angles.
“As a design and communication story, this one’s a leap beyond convention,” confides Malcolm. “We wanted to achieve what pretty much no brand has ‘til now – create a campaign line that was iconic in both visual appearance and meaning, that was 1000% designed for the mobile and social formats. An approach that made sense in an instant as you scroll the never-ending social feed. An iconic image that would prove to be a thumb-stopper.
“That meant we couldn’t solve this with the usual advertising approach of writing a campaign line. And fortunately, since we’re not built like a traditional agency, we tend to see things others don’t. In this case, the answer was inspired by the traditional Chinese ‘logogram’ or Hanzi character style. Standing-back, we could see in the Mandarin characters of the consumer mindset ‘It starts with me’ a kind of echo of the Roman ‘ID.’ characters. This led to exploring ways of visually combining both Hanzi and Roman to create a new language that combined Chinese and Western culture. The outcome was a completely new design solution to a typical advertising communication challenge.”
Ultimately it’s an example of a global brand meeting its audience on their terms. VW’s Brand House team in China are unlike typical global brand marketing teams. Telling the local market how to talk to their own audience. Rather than simply ‘localising’ the global brand via straight translation of global English copy, or trying to rigidly apply tone of voice or language guides, they’re all about getting into the warp and weft of Chinese culture.
Malcolm observes that even in this day and age, many brands hoping to expand in other markets cling to their own vernacular and culture. At best, it just leads to that brand being overlooked, at worst it can actively irritate the target market.
“Ultimately, when a foreign brand communicates in its mother-tongue to a local audience, it falls short of truly being part of the culture,” says Malcolm. “I see it all the time, whether it’s imperialist US brands advertising locally in English, Chinese brands (or should I say banks) advertising in Mandarin within European markets or even Australian brands attempting to speak to the New Zealand consumers. It inevitably falls a few degrees short. And often, when a foreign brand does make the effort to speak the local language, they miss the nuance and also end up landing a few degrees off. But in this case, combining Chinese and Western culture to create something new is a reflection of both the VW partnership in China as well as this generation’s passion for combining their own culture with elements of Western culture - in fashion, music and increasingly in how they communicate too.”
But the VW ID. icon isn’t just an example of becoming ingrained in the local linguistic culture, but pop culture too. In rolling out the icon, it’s been deployed in a multitude of channels and has popped up in the worlds of music and fashion. One of the heftiest, most influential parts of the launch was a collaboration with up-and-coming rap artist Tai Yi, with whom they created a chunky, blingy piece of jewellery. It’s a call back to VW’s music-culture legacy, the VW badges worn by the Beastie Boys, a nod to hip-hop culture and a mash up of local and global.
With this icon at the core of the launch, the campaign has been able to spin out multiple executions and take the brand to new spaces and audiences. From Malcolm’s point of view it is incredibly effective. “I think, as an industry, we’ve only really known one way of advertising. We draw these hard lines between ads, branded content, experience, design and so on. But that’s not really how the world is today. Consumers don’t distinguish so much. They join the dots between corporate behaviour, product and all things digital (esp. experience) in a super fluid way. So, it seems these forced divisions sometimes keep advertising ideas from keeping up with the reality of culture. What’s exciting about this idea is that it shows an entirely fresh way to communicate something big and meaningful in a single post as much as it does it in a music collaboration, just as it does in the product experience. So yes, it’s huge – you can’t separate it and put it into all these boxes that make it small because it’s literally iconic and exists in every place and space with equal meaning.”
‘It Starts with Me’ and the iconic logograph have been out there for a year and it’s permeated the Chinese market, and in terms of electric vehicles, VW ID. has pulled out ahead of its rivals in terms of desirability.
“VW has become the most sought-after brand for sustainable mobility in China,” reveals Malcolm. “But perhaps the real measure of success has been in the connection the campaign has built with this new generation of consumer whose perceptions are fast shifting from seeing brand relevant to their parents to now perceiving VW as cool and relevant to them.”
