The challenge

In May 2007 Skoda was about to launch the new Fabia into a highly competitive supermini sector. It’s a market centred on price and one where its rivals would include the Peugeot 207, the Renault Clio and the Vauxhall Corsa.

Advertising too is fairly generic, usually featuring a car driving down a winding country or mountain road but the Fabia needed to stand out. The message had to reach not only the core target market of couples aged 35 and over as well as a broader audience of supermini buyers but also the people that influence their car buying decisions.

When the creatives at Fallon considered the USP of the new Fabia, they noticed that as well as being a supremely well-engineered car it also had a slew of smaller, helpful features.
These included shopping bag hooks in the boot to keep shopping upright. The best way to sum up all these features they decided was simply to tell people that the new car was “full of lovely stuff”.

The TV solution

The creative message stood out from the rest of the category by translating the concept of lovely stuff into a language that everyone could understand: cake.

The 60-second and 30-second adverts showed Skoda engineers lovingly recreating the new Fabia using white chocolate chunks, raspberry jam, raisings, almonds, eggs and chocolate fudge.

The full-size replica included marzipan wing mirrors, a chocolate speedometer and an engine fan made of wafers, all designed to convey the message that the new car was “full of lovely stuff”. In total 12 specialists worked to create the model under the studio lights.

The 60-second ad was first broadcast on Thursday May 17 with the shorter execution being used from Monday May 21st..The ads appeared in shows such as Britain’s Got Talent, This Morning, Big Brother and Deal or No Deal.

The message was also communicated via PR, press, online, direct marketing and retailer activity. The PR activity in particular was designed to convey some of the softer messages around the new Fabia and highlighted the craftsmanship needed to create a car using flour, eggs and water, all the time linking the construction effort back to the lovely stuff inside the new car.

Results

The Skoda ad had the highest share of voice of any automotive message from May 17 to June 30 with 850 ratings achieved across a wide range of channels.

The innovative creative message also attracted a lot of buzz with nine Facebook groups with more than 2,000 members, more than 700,000 views of the ad via YouTube and around 150,000 returned searches for "Skoda cake car" on Google.

The bulk of the cake car was turned into compost and used by the East London Community Recycling Project on gardens and allotments.

“We knew we needed to do something pretty different from the competition to increase the appeal of the new Fabia... car advertising is so often guilty of clichés and the expected, that a lot of brands get lost. The TV medium was key for us though; it offered the chance communicate the ‘lovely stuff’ in an evocative and engaging way, whilst also allowing us to show all the love, care and attention that goes into the construction of the car.”

Simon Owen, Account Director, Fallon