Volkswagen puts Retailers and customers in the picture with national multimedia communication channel.

Few companies can match the brand recognition of Volkswagen (UK) Ltd. Yet, in the highly competitive UK car sales market, it’s important to continually reach customers in new ways that both refresh and endorse the Volkswagen brand; which is why Connectvision multimedia messaging was chosen for VTV (Volkswagen TV) nationwide multimedia information channel for its 230 Retailers.

Based on Connectvision multimedia messaging software developed by Saturn Communications Group Ltd, VTV channel is broadcast to LCD screens at Retailers showing a range of after sales products, car information, adverts, driver safety information and Volkswagen’s financial services offers. And it works. A trial of VTV across seven Retailers over a six month period showed a four-fold increase in sales of navigation systems compared with other Volkswagen Retailers.

Each Retailer has a 40” LCD screen in the Service area, with some Retailers opting for a second screen in the front-of-house entrance area; and a back projector screen in the sales area. The on screen content is tailored to each area, with the sales area screen displaying a multi-screen branded layout containing the latest vehicle images and videos together with news about Volkswagen events and local Retailer offers.

Screen content is managed from Volkswagen head office in Milton Keynes. Connectvision software is used to add, schedule and distribute content to all screens in the network. To reduce IT security and network capacity issues at each Retailer, the LCD screens are supplied with a dedicated PC providing the initial on screen content which is updated on-line by Volkswagen’s marketing team. The branded Service screen layout is split into three areas to show car video images, Volkswagen news and special promotional offers as text at the bottom of the screen. Retailers are able to customise part of the screen for news announcements and special offers. The Brand Manager of Wayside St Albans Ltd, one of Volkswagen’s largest Retailers, commented, “VTV is a welcome addition to our sales and service areas. It gives us another way of communicating with customers that goes beyond the static cars and images they see in the rest of the showroom. We’ve had some very positive feedback from customers.”

The success of the Volkswagen (UK) Retailer channel is being monitored closely by Volkswagen Germany. The internal communications manager at Volkswagen Passenger Cars, and project manager for the Retailer channel roll-out commented, “This is an exciting new medium to support our Retailers. Over the coming months we hope to increase the number of screens, develop the multimedia content and add new forms of content delivery as the Retailers begin to realise the potential of this communications channel.”

Volkswagen Group (UK) is no stranger to multimedia messaging. It has been using Connectvision internally for some time to manage and distribute content for its ‘News Forum’ service to over 400 employees working in Volkswagen Passenger Cars, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Seat and Skoda at its Blakelands headquarters in Milton Keynes. The ease with which the internal communications team within each business is able to draw on a wide variety of imagery and multimedia formats means that there is no shortage of material to use.