• by John Gaffney , July 1, 2003

With so much riding on the release of its first ever SUV you would think Volkswagen would take the supporting ad campaign very seriously. But that's not going to happen.

This is after all the brand that re-launched the VW Beetle by making fun of it. Remember the "0-60.....Yes" campaign? VW is taking a page from that book as it hits the street with the Touareg, which it is billing as "the most affordable and best equipped German SUV sold in America." The ad campaign backing the Touareg is hardly as wordy or serious. In other words, don't expect trucks climbing boulders, or soccer moms slinging mud in an off-road trek.

"This is a unique category and a unique vehicle," says VW model manager Kevin Boyle. "We took the same approach as we have in some other categories. We looked at what everyone else is doing and then we found something that we could do a little bit differently."

That difference is a print and TV campaign that pokes fun at the category and saves a little bit of irreverence for VW as a company. The print campaign, which breaks this week, takes four consecutive pages to show a VW GTI stuck in high water, and a Jetta straddling a huge snow bank, and then a Touareg breaking through them all. TV ads eschewed the brains and brawn of other SUV adds and went for actual actor auditions that didn't quite make the cut. The tagline: "Touareg: It does what other VWs can't."

Boyle said VW's approach is to an extent bred in its brand approach. But he also found through focus groups and in research work with Arnold Worldwide, that most potential and current SUV users don't intend to take their car off-road. The design of the car was built to reflect the flexibility VW thought was needed in an SUV. Boyle believes the ad campaign will support that flexibility.

Boyle said the media plan goes for "mindset over mass." Expect to see Friends, for example, on the same plan as The History Channel and Discovery for TV.