Marketing
Issue No. 42 - August/September 2008
Ellhof races to new ideas
Joerg Ellhof, who is Head of International Marketing Communications, for the world’s biggest carmaker, Renault, has that uniquely European quality of
courteous irreverence that makes his ‘break the rules’
message stronger.
Joerg, who will attend Marketing Week in person, has won 10 awards at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival during the past three years, including one Grand Prix award.
One of his award-winning campaigns, to market the Clio Renault Sport car, used new and traditional media to engage potential buyers - 1.2million of them in the
end - in a virtual rally race to ‘qualify’ to own the hot
new model.
Renault newsletter subscribers raced online from Berlin to Athens by clicking through checkpoint ads on national newspaper websites such as the UK’s Guardian and Le Monde in Paris. Only the fastest qualified to register for more information on the new car. In five days the campaign attracted 1.2million ad hits, with more than 11,000 racers starting the course and 68,000 visiting the Clio RS website.
“I have learned a lot from working with creative people,” Joerg says. “In fact, the term ‘creativity’ already incorporates breaking the rules. To create something implies that it has not existed before.
“Consequently, I started to challenge the creatives in our agencies in this direction. I asked for new, fresh and never-seen ideas. But, as they did, I suddenly found it ha...
