Audi Aggressively Promoted in Inauguration Coverage

As we reported yesterday, Audi of America is among the few automakers across the world that decided to increase the advertising budget in 2009. As a matter of fact, the German car manufacturer announced a 15 percent increase for the ad budget and loses no opportunity to be in the centre of hot events.

As The Advertising Age reported, Audi of America is the presenting sponsor of the evening broadcasts that will remind the inauguration of Barack Obama on ABC, CBS, NBC and other streamed video of the event online.

"The uncommon shared experience of the inauguration offered a remarkable opportunity to connect with Americans," said Scott Keogh, chief marketing officer of Audi of America. In addition, he claimed that his company was supporting progress by sponsoring this historic day's news. On its website, the Audi announced their new message: "Progress is beautiful" as well as "Progress moves forward Jan. 20."

More importantly, Audi was also the exclusive sponsor of the streaming broadcasts on major news sites including ABCNews.com, CBSNews.com, MSNBC.com and Washingtonpost.com. The car maker also bought full-day sponsorship of Slate.com and was the sole sponsor of The Atlantic's website yesterday.

As if all these weren't enough, Audi is also the exclusive sponsor of a special eight-page newspaper section called "Progress is beautiful" in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and other major dailies, reaching 8.6 million readers. Not to mention about Audi's intention to advertise during the 2009 Super Bowl...

Without being the devil's advocates, you don't have to be a genius that little does Audi care about historic days of US. On the contrary, it takes advantage of this hot event to attract the attention of millions of viewers. And that's called “aggressive advertising”.