“Shaping the future of premium mobility” – that was the theme of the day as Audi launched the new Audi e-tron GT, an event that lays down a new marker for how the company perceives its own brand. A futuristic outlook and redefining the concept of progress – the company has enlisted the aid of Burda’s BCN and the strong BurdaVerlag brands Elle and Esquire to translate these classic Audi values into a cross-media campaign. Together, the two partners are redefining luxury under their new banner, “Future Is An Attitude”. In order to assist Audi with this new initiative, full-service marketing agency BCN has developed a native campaign that integrates into two complementary flights across Burda’s print, online and social media platforms.
Establishing a dialogue
At the forefront of this concept is a range of statements and portraits from various prominent personalities that enforce the idea of luxury and the future as the products of a progressive attitude. The groundwork for a new discourse on the concept of “luxury” was laid in December 2020 with a statement campaign orchestrated by Elle and Esquire Editors-in-Chief Sabine Nedelchev and Dominik Schütte, together with Audi AG’s Head of Design, Marc Lichte, and Head of Brand, Henrik Wenders. The native print and online formats themselves were also structured in the form of a dialogue between the media figureheads and Audi’s representatives.
The centrepiece of the second flight was two time-intensive editorial photoshoots for ESQUIRE;and ELLE. These were designed to speak to both the male and female target audiences in the luxury segment, and to coincide with the launch of the Audi e-tron GT. The images appear in the second issue of lifestyle magazine ESQUIRE, available now, and in the new issue of ELLE, published on 7 April. The ESQUIRE photoshoot illustrates a dialogue between Henrik Wenders and Marc Lichte in which they explain how they apply the motto “Future Is An Attitude” to their work, which brand values they consider relevant, and how important it is to ensure that the company’s brand and design speak the same language so that the transformation of the brand with the famous four rings comes across as harmonious and plausible. The ELLE photoshoot provides portraits of a wide range of female entrepreneurs and go-getters, such as gastronomy expert Sandra Forster and Creative Director Caroline Sangha. As strong, independent women, they tell readers what they are doing to help ensure a sustainable future, what “luxury” means to them, and how they are shaping progress in their own image. The contents of the two photoshoots will be integrated into the appropriate Burda Media websites with the most reach using native formats, including video content and social snippets, and shared prominently on social media.
“Ensuring that our brand management strategy is implemented consistently and using a narrative storytelling approach based on our brand essence is crucial. This allows us to offer our audience an immersive experience that goes far beyond the traditional concept of ‘show and tell’. As such, our partnership with Burda is an important part of Audi’s brand alignment.”
“Our profile on Audi’s ‘Future Is An Attitude’ campaign in ESQUIRE and ELLE is a milestone in the field of storytelling in brand media. Achievements like this are only possible when the advertising company itself also buys into the possibilities storytelling has to offer and the value of brand media.”