Work

Driving Authenticity: Helping Dacia Unleash Its Unconventional Spirit

  • Automotive
a dacia jogger hybrid car is driving down a road

The Challenge

Dacia needed to transform its brand positioning and improve its value perceptions to claim its rightful position in the automotive industry. Vivaldi partnered with Dacia to bring its unique, no-nonsense personality to life and effectively communicate its high product quality in a way that is true to the brand.

The Opportunity

This need for repositioning sparked an opportunity for Dacia to tell an authentic story and build a unique brand that revolves around Dacia providing everything consumers need in a car and nothing else. The reframing allowed the brand to mock the competition with a sense of humor and create iconic campaigns that increased brand relevancy in the market.

The Outcome

Our collaboration allowed Dacia to uniquely differentiate itself from the competition and implement large-scale activations and campaigns. This strategic partnership propelled the brand forward - helping Dacia achieve 3rd position for retail share growth YoY.

How do you improve value perceptions of Dacia in the UK automotive market? 

In the UK market Dacia was routinely viewed as cheap and cheerful. The strategy behind their “You do the math” campaign had proven successful with some audiences in driving growth. However, the Dacia brand had a latent potential to grow further with high product quality demonstrated via winning numerous awards and outstanding reviews. Vivaldi Group was tapped to help reposition the brand, emphasizing its amazing value for the money, and by bringing the new global brand positioning to life whilst driving awareness, consideration, and conversion with new audiences.

Making Dacia relevant to more people in the UK

How do you bring to life the unique, authentic, down to earth and no-nonsense personality of a brand while increasing value perceptions to show it’s not like any other car brand? 

The answer: By being proud to champion the essentials and keep it real. Vivaldi leaned into the messaging that Dacia has everything you need in a car and nothing else. This focus enabled Dacia to actively pivot against cliched traditional car advertising and mock the competition with a sense of humor and good grace. 

Vivaldi Group unveiled innovative campaigns including the April Fools “Dacia Dustar” campaign, which enabled Dacia to go toe to toe with Tesla by launching a Dacia car into space, affordably. “Not every other car” mocked the advertising tropes and cliches of other car brands. And the “Specially Designed for Great British Adventure” series used abbreviations typically used by car brands to have some fun with “N.N.T.F. (no need to faff) Roof Bars” and “E.B.T.K.S. (everything but the kitchen sink) Storage.” 

A key aspect of Vivaldi Group’s strategy and approach was to create entertaining, highly engaging and snackable content that audiences could share widely; in essence providing social currency to audiences and activating them to share the messages more widely. 

The strategy was implemented through all channels from always-on social posts to large scale activations and campaigns. It was a rich territory from which to create a dialogue with audiences, as well as engage with other brands. 

Dacia Sandero

As a result, Dacia achieved number 3 position for retail share growth year on year, increasing registrations by 83% compared to H1/2021 and getting Sandero, Duster and Jogger into the top 10 in their respective segments. Not bad for a car brand that people used to mock as cheap as chips.