ZITRÖN: REBRANDING FOR THE ËND OF AN ËRA

Campaign and Content Design, Public Relations

The challenge

Anyone buying a car in Germany has many manufacturers in their awareness set. But not Citroën, for which brand awareness has been at a low point lately. For Citroën’s 100th birthday, the brand wanted to remind Germans of its existence. But it was time to change something — so we did!

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The solution

The most important element of a brand is its name. Yet, in the case of Citroën, we observed that Germans rarely pronounce Citroën correctly. We used this cultural behavior and interpreted the claim “Inspired by you” as literally “Inspired by Germans.” Citroën became Zitrön, as Germans pronounce the brand name anyway. Knowing full well that such a rebranding of an established, international brand seems unthinkable, we officially presented the rebranding at a real dealer conference. The entire website and all social channels were rebranded at the same time and the press was officially informed. The rebranding was even visible at the point of sale and was promoted with an agile and cross-channel campaign.

The results

150

Nationwide coverage with 150 articles in German and international media from digital to analogue and even TV

50

More than 50 brands and even the competition interacted with us, celebrating the new name, the birthday and praising Citroën for the courage

11,85

The media equivalent value came to a sensational ROI of 11,85 on the media budget

4.6 billion

Citroën went viral with 4.6 billion media impressions: On launch day, #Zitrön dominated the trends at No. 1 on Twitter and also led the Google search trends

13.33%

Zitrön has generated awareness among the population and brought Citroën back into people’s minds. Not only did we succeed in stopping the downward trend in awareness, but we managed to increase spontaneous awareness by 13.33%.