Aftersales communication | Work

Citroën’s customer promise of Citroën & You was not being delivered as strongly as it could be, so Acuity looked at ways to produce campaigns and marketing materials which would have this thought consistently at their heart. ‘Consistent’ was a key word: the refreshed Citroën brand had just been launched, so although dealers needed to be able to personalise their marketing, they also needed to retain the new look and feel, and support the three core brand values: Optimistic, Human and Smart.

It was clear that a one-size-fits-all approach wouldn’t work, so we carried out extensive research into car owners (including interviews), and worked closely with Citroën to identify and map a range of customer personas. This let us identify groups to focus on.

For example, the research revealed that owners of cars between three and six years old are cost conscious when it comes to their cars – they’re likely to go elsewhere for servicing to save money. This not only gave us key groups to concentrate on, but also unlocked a strong messaging strategy for each one.

The first step was to create specific aftersales guidelines for the UK market. These dovetailed perfectly with the existing Citroën global brand guidelines and would ensure that look and feel would be consistent going forward. Secondly, and with knowledge of upcoming events and seasonal campaigns, we created a library of UK-specific assets including an image library, graphic icons and messaging. Most importantly, we created a range of templates accessible via Citroën’s dealer marketing portal for dealer use.

The result was a localised and flexible version of Citroën’s international look and feel. On a practical level, it was an omni-channel campaign which dealers had control over. They could build, personalise, target and manage their own campaigns from one easily accessible central marketing asset management platform, and all the while with consistent brand messaging.