Volkswagen

Volkswagen of America’s CMO brought us one problem. People buy their first Volkswagen, then buy something else. The car wasn’t the issue; owning one didn’t live up to buying one. Once the experience after the dealership is underwhelming, a shiny BMW looks just as appealing as a shiny Volkswagen.

I led a small team, working closely with the CMO and the marketing team, to create a creative platform that could shift the culture across the organisation and set the foundation for dealer marketing nationwide. After an intense one-week design sprint and some ruthless dot voting, the Board of Customer Obsession was born.

It was built to change behaviour, not just deliver a message. It had an authentic, unexpected tone to cut through the corporate communications people had learned to ignore, a framework for changing how employees, dealers and partners behaved, Obsesstival, a company-wide event for innovation and customer centricity, and new incentives that rewarded the behaviour the brand needed.

It outperformed every comparable internal effort on engagement, and became the reference for employee engagement and customer centricity across Volkswagen Group of America’s brands.