Lotus

Lotus 's brief was to take on Porsche (a tall order indeed). There is no doubt that with the qualitative research, which we conducted with Porsche owners, we really got inside their heads.

Many were young city ' whiz kids ' who chose Porsche because it epitomized their own qualities of reliability and love of being driven hard [or so they believed]. When they came to discuss Lotus, they hardly had any image of the marque, but we strove to find the one thing that would appeal to them about the brand. Eventually we discovered it. They loved the fact that the cars took a long time to be built. It must have equated to their hand made shoes and tailor-made shirts.

One interesting recommendation we made was that as the campaign concentrated on the quality of build and the skills of the work force then it should be displayed prominently in the workshops.

Half page ads ran in the quality national press, and because the research also proved that people couldn't recognize Lotus when shown photographs, we simply showed the car as big as possible in full colour, in all its glory. The strategy certainly worked and suddenly Lotus dealers had showroom traffic again.

Car advertising can be very challenging as Saab and Lotus certainly were, so was our pitch for Lada. But that's another story.

Press