MarketingDojo #88: ❓The Legend Of The Lost Rings⭕⭕
Audi's Missing Rings, Cheap> Fast, Season's Greetings Courtesy AI and More.
I scheduled this email in advance.
After a non-stop run since June, I'm finally packing my bags to visit a country I am fascinated with.
I will take a break from writing for a couple of weeks as I travel through South China, hopefully gulping copious quantities of Xiao Long Bao (soup-filled dumplings).
Last I was in China, I dashed off to Xian and witnessed the unbelievable scale of the Terracotta army. The mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor has remained unexcavated for approximately 2,232 years, and its legends are fascinating.
Here's hoping for more such adventures. I will see you in a couple of weeks.
Meanwhile, here's the agenda for today's newsletter:
🛑 The Missing Rings of Audi
🎄 Coke’s Dystopian Christmas
🏗️ LV’s Got Style Even When Renovating
🛍️ Amazon Is Taking the Fight to Temu
And more.
No Rings to Rule Them All.
Distinctive brand assets are a brand's fingerprints - unique and recognizable.
Think McDonald's arches, Nike's swoosh or Netflix's Tudum -They're burned into our collective memory.
Building brand assets is a marathon, not a sprint. It takes investment, patience and consistency. Take Audi's four rings – a symbol that's been part of the automotive landscape for 92 years. Well, until last week.
The German automaker did something unprecedented. Audi and SAIC have entered into a partnership in China and unveiled a new electric vehicle last week. They ditched the rings. Yes, you read that right. Their new logo? Just 'AUDI' in plain capital letters. No rings. No history. No distinction.
Now, context matters here. German luxury automakers are fighting for survival in China's electric vehicle market. The numbers tell a brutal story: Audi, BMW, and Mercedes collectively hold a measly 2% of China's New Energy Vehicle market in H1 2024. Meanwhile, BYD and Tesla are dominating with 44% market share.
Sure, desperate times call for desperate measures. But this feels like half-measures at best. Instead of going bold with a dedicated sub-brand (Changan Automobile's Avatr or Geely's Zeekr), Audi's chosen this awkward middle ground – sacrificing their most distinctive asset while keeping one foot in their comfort zone.
As someone who once stewarded the Audi brand, I get the pressure to adapt. But stripping away your most recognizable symbol? That's like Coca-Cola abandoning its contour bottle in a challenging market.
Sometimes, being bold means protecting what makes you unique while revolutionizing everything else.
Season's Greetings From The Machine.
Nothing spells Christmas better than Coke's heartwarming season's greetings ad. In our Pavlovian way, we have come to expect it every year.
But this time, Coke decided to swap its Christmas gift with an AI-generated substitute. Coke's Christmas ad this year is 100% AI-generated.
The result? A Christmas ad that feels about as authentic as a plastic Christmas tree in a desert mall.
The ad touches all potential cliches - the train through the snow, Santa and his reindeer, lots of smiles and more.
But the reaction to the ad ... that's largely negative.
Coke's year-end AI slop is a perfect metaphor for all that's happening this year - marketing has sacrificed effectiveness for efficiency.
The ad ends with a tagline - Real Magic. It's ironic, considering everyone and everything in that ad is fake.
When Cheap Beats Fast: Amazon Launches Haul.
If you can't beat them, copy them.
Last week, Amazon launched Amazon Haul to compete with Temu and Shein using a familiar playbook.
The inspiration? A simple yet powerful insight that these upstarts discovered: customers will happily wait longer for products if they're dirt cheap (we're talking sub-$5 territory).
Turns out, Amazon's obsession with one-day delivery might have been missing the point for this particular crowd.
Aggressive marketing blitz and dirt-cheap prices have paid off for Temu.
By mid-2024, Temu has amassed a staggering 47 million monthly active users in the U.S., actually outpacing both Amazon and AliExpress in user engagement. Their projected growth tells an even more impressive story – from $19 billion to $53 billion in GMV for 2024 alone. Not bad for a platform with less than 2% market share in the U.S.
Recent data indicates that approximately 5% of Amazon shoppers have made purchases at Temu, while around 4% have shopped at Shein.
Amazon Haul is clearly a strategy by Amazon to ring-fence its fickle, price-conscious customers. Yet early teething troubles have begun - the newly inducted sellers are filling up the new marketplace with weird AI-generated nightmarish images!
Louis Vuitton Launched Construction Chic.
Demolition and renovations are an eyesore. But not if it involved Louis Vuitton. The luxury handbag maker turned the under-construction, iconic flagship store into a canvas for brand theatre.
LV's flagship store on Manhattan's 57th Street has been turning heads since 1980. So when they decided to demolish the 20-story building, they could have just thrown up some standard green construction barriers and called it a day. Instead, they turned their construction site into what the Wall Street Journal dubbed "The Most Fashionable Scaffolding in the World."
The giant trunks, complete with LV's recognisable Trianon Grey" textured canvas and intricate metal work, have become a TikTok sensation.
The installation wasn't cheap. As the WSJ article describes it:
No detail was spared: the six "trunks" feature 840 laser-cut-steel rivets and a 5,000-pound, 40-foot-long black handle, all rendered from 3-D scans of actual Vuitton trunks. The approximately 7-foot-tall corners were hand-welded in chrome-plated steel, while the 18 steel latches and locks were each laser-cut. From conception to installation, the trunks took six months to complete.
In an era where brands fake their outdoor advertising with CGI for social media buzz, LV's commitment to real-world craftsmanship stands out. Sure, 2024 has been rough on luxury brands – even LVMH saw a 5% sales dip in Q3 due to weak Chinese demand.
Yet LV is first amongst equals in the industry, with average margins across products well beyond the 40% mark, thanks to the care and thought behind maintaining the brand.
Short Stuff:
Meta will offer reduced ad-free subscriptions and less personalized ads in the EU (Appeasing EU regulators).
Meta-owned X competitor Threads will get ads in early 2025 (Monetizing Threads).
YouTube launched Jewels, a new way for creators to earn on YT (Copying TikTok again).
That’s a wrap on this week. Thank you for your time and attention. If you liked this week’s newsletter or found something interesting, please give me a like ❤️ or drop a comment🗨️. Your support helps drive the newsletter's discoverability.
See you in a couple of weeks.
Regards,
Garima Mamgain
P.S: Third Time Is A Charm (Just Ask The Pharaoh)
Peserevarnce pays. A wisdom not discovered on LinkedIn but found in practice 4,600 years ago.
I have serious trouble saying no to rabbit holes. So last week I spent a few hours listening to a podcast on the Egyptian empire's rise and fall.
Egyptians were master storytellers. One story that struck me was the pyramid building by the first King of Egypt's fourth dynasty - King Sneferu.
In 2500BC Egypt, Pyramid-building by the king was a matter of ego and pride. Sneferu's first attempt, the Meidum Pyramid, was an architectural face-palm. Design flaws and shaky foundations led to its collapse, leaving it standing like an abandoned Jenga tower.
Not the one to give up, the good king Sneferu embarked on a second project at Dahshur. The initial pyramid design was a steeper angle. Somewhere mid-way through the construction, the design changed. Thus leaving the pyramid with a weird bent.
Most kings would've just accepted a pyramid that looks like a five-year-old drew it as their final resting place, but not King Snefru. He commissioned work for a Red Pyramid in Dahasur (40 kms south of Cairo). This time, his team succeeded in pulling in many firsts. The construction of the Red Pyramid marked the first successful transition from stepped pyramids to smooth-sided pyramids - An architectural marvel on a never-seen-before scale for the time.
The Red Pyramid provided King Sneferu's son with valuable lessons.
Pharaoh Khufu built the Great Pyramid of Giza. The most popular pyramid in Egypt remained the tallest artificial structure for over 3,800 years and the only surviving member of the 7 wonders of the ancient world.
The history of Egypt is colourful and intriguing. But Pharaoh Sneferu's contributions to its glory are unmatched.
He showed us that even 4,600 years ago, the path to greatness was paved with failed MVPs and pivots. Some lessons, it seems, are truly timeless.
Thank you Garima for a value packed post! The Coke ad is a real travesty!
Have a wonderful time on those fascinating land Ma...