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AA brand motoring along nicely

Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Creative December 11th, 2006 by Branwell Johnson

Motoring organisation the AA is sitting pretty right now in terms of how it is regarded by the public, which will be good news for any potential suitor.

The company’s venture capital owners are now thought to be lining the 105-year-old brand up for sale – coincidentally or not the company has also just revived its “You’ve got AA friend” television campaign.

The campaign seems to be having the desired effect because the latest BrandIndex figures for the organisation from YouGov show that the brand has restored its “Buzz” factor after a steep downturn earlier in the year.

The AA’s Buzz factor, based on whether people have heard positive or negative statements about the brand, now stands at 10. This has been a stable since the disastrous dip in January when it plunged to -1 on the back of negative publicity when the organisation apparently refused to move the car of a member who had died at the wheel. The company said at the time that membership ended with the driver’s death.

The power of the AA’s brand is based on heritage and trust and the ad campaign, developed by Delaney Lund Knox Warren and first launched in March, is designed to reassure stranded motorists that the AA team will always be on hand.

The campaign was shot by film director Tony Kaye and uses the Carole King song “You’ve Got A Friend.”

The campaign seems to have helped stabilise perceptions of the AA and on Friday (24 November) its BrandIndex Quality rating was 26 – it was down to 19 in January – and its Recommend rating now stands at 17, although it has never regained the heights of last December when the rating stood at 20.

The AA is, of course, now more than a breakdown service and offers a multitude of financial insurance products and credit cards.The organisation is owned by CVC and Permira and reports suggest that they are asking £3 billion for the business, which they bought for £1.7 billion from Centrica two years ago.

The value of the organisation lies in the brand and it seems that the marketing team have helped restore consumer confidence and the investment in advertising has paid off.

About YouGov

YouGov is a full service agency, pioneering the use of the internet for market research and public consultation.

Using proprietary consumer and specialist audience panels, YouGov operates in the UK, North America and the Middle East. One of the most quoted research agencies in the UK, it has an established track record of consistently accurate and high quality survey data, expertise in constructing nationally representative samples online and developing consultation and deliberative research techniques. The launch of BrandIndex in 2005, which monitors the brand health of over 1,100 brands continuously, underlined YouGov’s reputation for innovation and the service now counts some of the UK’s largest brands amongst its subscribers.

BrandIndex is a daily measure of public perception across 32 sectors, with brands measured on a 7-point profile and data delivered next-day. For BrandIndex, YouGov interviews 2,000 people each weekday, more than half a million interviews per year. Respondents are drawn from YouGov’s proprietary online panel of more than 130,000 UK respondents. For full methodology please see www.brandindex.com