Perspective: Volkswagen’s PunchDub game

SkiddMark

…The first rule of any good social media campaign is to make the audience your focal point and Volkswagen have a track-record of doing this better than most. …

PunchDub however is perhaps their most ambitious project to date. It began with a $6 million TV spot during the 2010 Super Bowl weekend, part of an integrated campaign to introduce a new game called ‘PunchDub’. This is a reworking of the classic kids travel game Punch Buggy (or Slug Bug), which is essentially a play-fight version of ‘Eye-Spy’ that entitles anyone who spots a VW Beetle to call out ‘punch buggy’ before dealing their unsuspecting fellow passenger a punch in the arm…

Volkswagen’s new ‘PunchDub’ game extends the rules to all models in the range, with each model having its own special style of punch to qualify for a subsequent points score.

You can read all the intricacies of the rule-book in a 23-page electronic guide on Volkswagen’s website, which explains how to deal virtual punches to your friends via Facebook Connect and the prizes available for the most successful players of the game.

The Machine Gun: continue punching rapidly until your pal moves away. Goes best with the Golf GTI

Another technique used by Volkswagen to foster engagement is the leaderboard on the PunchDub site, this shows the total number of punches recorded (273,303 as of 30-03-2010), most punches by a user and top vehicles which in case you’re interested ranks as follows;

1. Passat CC (42,823)
2. Golf GTI (36,510)
3. New Beetle Convertible (29,589)
4. Eos (25,068)
5. New Beetle (25,010)
6. Tiguan (23,706)
7. Touareg (23,464)
8. Jetta (23,372)
9. Routan Minivan (19,996)
10. Golf (16,702)

Now, getting back to those 8 videos that are currently available in the PunchDub series. The series kicks off with a short mockumentary starring a character called ‘Sluggy Patterson’ who allegedly started the PunchDub pastime 50 years ago. …

Comedian Tracy Morgan and soul legend Stevie Wonder star in VW

Volkswagen are hoping to create a genuine phenomenon that will outlast the campaign and introduce many new customers to the brand. So has it worked? Well let’s introduce you to the current series of videos and then let you decide…

1. Meet Sluggy Patterson the creator of PunchDub – this is our introduction to the surly ex-Boxer who is claimed to have started the pastime [Unique views: 90,741] *
2. Sluggy Patterson talks about his blog – VW have asked Sluggy to write down all his punch stories on a blog [Unique views: 11,395]
3. Sluggy Patterson talks about his Twitter – Sluggy answers questions posted on his Twitter feed (or Tweeter as Sluggy calls it) [Unique views: 8,607]
4. Sluggy Patterson talks about the rules of PunchDub – For example “No more than 76 shots for each car”, Why? Because Sluggy says so [Unique views: 8,630]
5. VW PunchDub Commercial – TV commercial featuring soul singer Stevie Wonder and comedian Tracy Morgan [Unique views: 933,626]
6. How did he play PunchDub? – So how did Stevie Wonder play PunchDub when a red VW Jetta drove by? [Unique views: 15,499]
7. NEW: CC Reveal – VW’s Passat CC catches out an unwary car park attendant in this ad [Unique views: 610]
8. NEW: Tiguan Vroom – The Tiguan is the only compact SUV with a turbocharged engine as standard, cue another round of PunchDub [Unique views: 525]

User views are just one measure of a campaign’s success, another relevant outcome would be evidence of user-generated videos of which there are few – although several VW dealers have created a few.

Nearly 3,400 people are following Sluggy Patterson’s twitter feed which is being updated regularly and there are daily retweets and conversations on both Twitter and Facebook, so in terms of awareness and user engagement we’d judge this campaign as a success, although perhaps the high-volume of videos and fictional theme may have confused a few people.

Take a look for yourself at Volkswagen’s Channel on SkiddPlayer, they’re well executed, humorous and a good example of the type of social media campaign you can expect to see more of in future.

*Source: YouTube/SkiddPlayer as of 30th March 2010

The "Mystique" of Volkswagen, Not the Mistake of "Punch Dub"

My kudos to Deutsch LA in their work on the Punch Dub campaign.

In preliminary buzz, we heard a lot about "Sluggy" Patterson, the inventor of "Punch Buggy" or "Slug Bug." Some of us cared about knowing more, and others didn't. I don't know who orchestrated the social media presence, but you could learn more about him--reach out and slug him, so to speak--on Twitter and Facebook, if you cared to do so.

Shortly after word got out that Tracy Morgan was going to cameo in the Super Bowl ad, a comment or two went up tying Tracy Morgan and his past problems with the game, and how they both encouraged domestic violence.

I'm assuming--but I didn't bother to look it up--that Deutsch runs the Audi campaign as well. After the fact, I learn that "Green Police" was the Nazi Constabulary.

I saw a thread running here. It reminded me of an "Are You Being Served" episode where the department store decided to have a German week, and Mister Grainger had to deal with a German tourist who wanted to buy a British Tweed jacket. Mister Grainger wanted to sell the German tourist one of those Bavarian caps that have what looks like a shaving brush stuck to the side. After exchanging comments like "Aren't you proud of being British," and "Aren't you proud of being German," the German tourist storms out (like a trooper?) spouting German, and Mr. Grainger saying "Damn, Bosch. We did win the war, you know."

It also reminded me of an episode of an episode of "Fawlty Towers" where John Cleese as Basil Fawlty goes over the top dealing with German tourists and ends up putting a comb under his nose like a moustache and goose-stepping around the dining room.

I could see the "Punch Dub" campaign spiralling down like a Messerschmidt in flames. You'd have Tracy Morgan reminding people of how Jesse Owens rubbed salt into the Nazi's wounds at the Berlin Olympics, but also kindling the idea that violence is a form of recreation. Max the Beetle would show up in black with red zigzags on its side and a stubby mustache on its front. A German helmetted driver would pass by in a Thing (which is in reality a WWII German Jeep-equivalent) Max would start spewing Hitleresque diatribe about das Volks Wagen (the People's Car) and World domination of the auto market.

But Deutsch pulled it all off by not only not staving off anti-Semitic/anti-Germanic hate/fear/dread/loathing, but making people feel good about recognizing automobiles that are well designed, engineered for the World Market, and that meet the needs and sensibilities of Americans--with humor.

Some concentrated on Tracy Morgan, but Deutsch made Tracy a prop to Stevie Wonder-the Ambassador to World Peace. What a great stroke of genius. Not only did Stevie Wonder "see" the VW and punch Tracy first, he even declared the color. Tracy said, "How did he do that?" Well, here is a YouTube explaining how he did it.



The music Deutsch chose was fitting, as well. It's indie-folk rock. I gather this genre exists and thrives due to the iPod and MP3 players, so it is fitting for the iPod crowd. It is trendy, cutting edge, and has a"literati" feel to it. It is not jarring for those of us who are aging hippies. (And after seeing "The Who," we realized that "our music" just might be killing us--look what it did to band!)

The song is "Two Weeks" by "Grizzly Bear". I found a new bad to follow. I hear a little Billy Joel/Jackson Brown feel to it--not in a derivative way. Here is the song as it was played on David Letterman.



And finally, here is the full 60-second spot.

Volkswagen Super Bowl Commerical -- What's the Song?

In reviewing the traffic on my blog, I see that I got a lot of hits related to a search for the name of the song used in the "Punch Dub" spot. Here is perhaps a more definitive answer to the question from someone who is surely much more knowledgeable of current music than I am.

AOL Radio Blog

Posted on Feb 7th 2010 9:18PM by Jocelyn Voo

You probably played the "slug bug" game when you were a kid -- punching the poor soul who happened to be within arm's reach as a Volkswagen rolled by -- and the nostalgia certainly isn't lost on the German automaker, whose "Punch Dub" commercial aired in the third quarter of the Super Bowl with the dreamy vocal harmonies of indie folk-rock band Grizzly Bear's 'Two Weeks' wafting in the background.
Based in Brooklyn, Grizzly Bear came onto the scene in the early '00s playing alongside as varied acts as fellow indie group The Dirty Projectors, alt-rock legends Radiohead, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. 'Two Weeks' is the second track off the group's hugely popular third album, 'Veckatimest,' released in May 2009 and named after a tiny island on Cape Cod. It's also the first single off the record.
And while the band has been largely popular with music critics ('Two Weeks' ranked as no. 162 in Pitchfork Media's Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s, and 'Veckatimest' was voted Stereogum's 2nd best album of 2009) and mainstream media as a whole (the VW ad, of course, and also an episode of the CBS sitcom 'How I Met Your Mother'), they've still retained many of their original rabid fans -- one so much than he made a very cool CGI video homage to 'Two Weeks.' Check it out alongside the VW commercial after the jump.

Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear from Gabe Askew on Vimeo