VW launches family-oriented marketing for bigger U.S. vehicles

Seventy-eight-year-old Marie Gallagher's hair was wet and in rollers when a couple of casting agents rang her doorbell to interview her for a possible role in a new Volkswagen ad. She wasn't expecting them for another hour, and had even planned to serve them tea and Irish bread that was still in the oven. But now she was scrambling, as she shoved her 2-year-old German Shepherd out the back door and tried to calm herself down."I thought I was going to be all dolled up looking like a million dollars," she said. But now all she could do was say to herself, "Settle down, open the door, this is the way I am."As it turns out, the Irish grandmother of seven with almost no acting experience was a perfect match for VW. She went on to win the lead role in a new campaign by Deutsch L.A. for one of the automaker's most important vehicle introductions in years, the Atlas crossover.The seven-passenger vehicle is the largest vehicle VW has ever built in the U.S. The campaign, in which Gallagher plays a widow fulfilling the wish of her husband by traveling the country, marks a pivot into new family-oriented marketing for a brand long associated with selling smaller cars to single people.VW, known for iconic campaigns such as "Think Small," is now thinking bigger as it seeks to lure buyers into an expanded lineup of roomier vehicles.The Atlas enters a market that is already crowded with SUVs and crossovers as automakers seek to quench the thirst of Americans who are moving away from cars and into larger vehicles. VW is making its appeal as it also tries to put its emissions scandal in the rearview mirror.It won't be easy, said Michelle Krebs, a senior analyst for AutoTrader. "It's a whole new part of the market for Volkswagen and they are small player," she said, noting that brands such as Chevy and Ford have loyal followings for their established SUV and crossover offerings like Traverse and Explorer.VW set the stage for its new approach last month with a fun-loving and slightly racy ad called "Luv Bug." Backed by Dean Martin's "The Birds and the Bees," it showed a couple having some fun in a VW Beetle. The couple's ever-expanding family then grows into sequentially larger VW models, ending with the Atlas. Going for tears

VW launches family-oriented marketing for bigger U.S. vehicles

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