Audi may make sleek vehicles, but a bold new marketing strategy takes this skill to a completely new level. This week, Audi launches its own television channel in Britain which, if successful, could be rolled out in other countries, too.
The Audi Channel will run 24 hours, seven days a week and is aimed at a mass market audience: British car owners and car enthusiasts. The launch schedule is split between product-related "infotainment" during the day and more general entertainment-driven material in the evenings and at weekends.
The channel is being broadcast over the Sky Digital satellite television platform.
More viewers will get the service in coming months when Audi UK completes negotiations with terrestrial digital platforms operated by Freeview and cable television operators.
The channel is also being made available for broadband internet users via Audi UK's website.
The channel has cost £2 million (€3 million) to set up and Audi is committing between £1 million and £2 million (€1.5 and €3 million) a year to cover running costs - equivalent to annual expenditure on the Audi UK website.
The decision to extend from advertiser to broadcaster was born of growing concern that British viewers were spending less time engaging with the brand's television advertising, says Gary Savage, Audi UK's marketing director.
The Audi Channel is the first in a new generation of Ofcom-regulated channels under a newly created licence allowing advertisers to become broadcasters and use their own channel to promote their brand values and products.
The new licences require a fine distinction to be made between promotion and sales (with the latter allowed only under "shopping channel" licences) but it is a distinction that Audi was keen to exploit.
"Audi is very much committed to a showroom-based sales structure, but this offered the chance to win over consumers to the brand more subtly - even if that doesn't result in immediate sales," says Charlie Rudd, deputy managing director of Audi UK's advertising agency BBH, which developed the channel.
The extension from advertiser to broadcaster is a big step but one that a growing number of brands are assessing as attention turns from conventional advertising to so-called brand content - entertainment funded by a brand owner that can be exploited across a variety of media platforms: television, radio, live events, mobile phones and the internet.
According to Adrian Pettett, a partner at Cake, which is developing brand content for a number of companies: "It is a step up from brand content, but the same rules apply: whatever the advertiser commissions must be entertaining, quality, unmissable TV."