Saatchi Düsseldorf Brings Some Robo Romance to Kobold Spot

A clean, dust-free home without having to do any vacuuming – this is now possible thanks to the vacuum robots by Kobold, a division of the company Vorwerk International Strecker & Co. from Wollerau in Switzerland. The company aims to convince even more modern, tech-savvy households around the world of this technology with the new model ‘Kobold VR200’.

Saatchi & Saatchi in Düsseldorf is going to help them do it: the team headed by Christian Rätsch, Stéphanie Rupp and Alexander Reiss prevailed against five renowned competitors in a multilevel international pitch and has now developed a launch campaign for the eight key markets Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic and China.

The international campaign already starts in September. Saatchi & Saatchi will highlight the ‘Kobold VR200’ cross-medially with a TV-spot, online films, display ads, digital content, Social Media ideas, literature and retail marketing strategies for Vorwerk’s own shops. The ideas for this campaign were developed out of Düsseldorf in cooperation with international offices from the Saatchi & Saatchi network.

The focus of the campaign is the story of a small, clumsy toy robot that falls in love with the extremely accurate Kobold robot vacuum. Under the direction of Jamie Rafn, the story has been realised by the British film production company ‘Smuggler’.

“A robot vacuum is a high-tech product, which we would like to take out of its niche. The challenge is that we have to explain this technical product and highlight the superiority of the ‘Kobold VR200’, but we must also present it in a highly emotional manner,” says Alexander Reiss, Executive Creative Director at Saatchi & Saatchi Düsseldorf.

With this campaign, Kobold has ventured into producing a central film for its key markets for the first time. The spot will air on TV and on the Internet, and the international campaign is kicking off in Germany mid September.

“To us, Vorwerk is a client for the heart that understands how important it is to communicate their brand and products emotionally as well as strategically,” states Christian Rätsch, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Germany, “with our Lovemarks philosophy, we are ideally set up to support this claim with strong creative work.”

Hillary Roche, International Marketing Director at Vorwerk, states: “Saatchi & Saatchi understands how we work, how our indirect distribution structure works, as well as how and where we are most able to reach our customers. Their experience with the development and implementation of global campaigns and Saatchi & Saatchi’s strong integrated competence will help us launch the “Kobold VR200”.