Where Volkswagen was 10 years ahead of the game

The primary focus in all forms of motorsport is performance. It’s the ultimate parameter of success.

Sébastien Ogier grilling steaks from the engine bay of his rally car, Andreas Mikkelsen being spun around in an office chair to simulate Corsica’s 10,000 turns or the Polo R WRC playing starring roles facing off against a Spanish bull or being used as a sewing machine don’t exactly help clear that parameter.

But as we explored on DirtFish earlier this festive season, Volkswagen Motorsport’s crushing success in the World Rally Championship wasn’t just through the might of its performances. It was the strength of its individuals, and the culture created inside the team, that helped it sustain its domination. And equally, the image it portrayed to the outside world.

A sub-conversation I held with Richard Browne led me to another pillar of VW’s success story that was so fascinating, it deserved another feature of its own.

Volkswagen Rally The World.

Who remembers it? If you were actively following the WRC from 2013-16, how could you forget it?

As a brand, VW is often seen as ahead of the game in terms of its marketing. Just look at how many famous TV commercials it has created over the years for its road cars. Perhaps it was therefore fitting that its marketing efforts in the WRC were very much in this spirit.

For all the impact it was making on the stages with its stage wins, podiums and championships, it was having just as big an impact off them as Andre Dietzel, Volkswagen’s current head of content who grew into the head of communications role at Volkswagen Motorsport role at the time, explains.

“It was clear that we had to bring our team to another level to compete in WRC [after the Dakar], but we were also all aware that we have to step up a bit with communication,” Dietzel says. “And I think the way we approached it communication-wise was also a little bit… I think we were a bit humble.

“I mean at the beginning, we never expected this success. So from the very beginning we were thinking of how to approach WRC, because we could not be sure that we would be successful. There were very strong brands like Citroën, they were almost invincible at that time; Ford also has a big heritage and a lot of successes. We were not expecting to be winning from the beginning.”

Marketing and communication is naturally a lot easier when you’re winning. For example in 2024, Hyundai’s team had a massive leg-up on M-Sport’s with more on-stage performances and results to shout about.

Volkswagen was therefore aware that it couldn’t simply rely on success, as it may not have it.

“So also the communication concept, let’s say, was a little bit more like, ‘OK, what can we do independent from our success?'” Dietzel continues. “So to have content or to have communication assets that are not only relying on sporting success.

“Of course it’s always easy if you’re winning to tell the story, but if you’re not, you also have to tell something. And that was also one, let’s say, baseline that led to how we did it.”

So how did it do it? What actually was Volkswagen Rally The World?

In short, it was a series of video shorts that depicted the characters within the team and where the rally team was heading. But the videos were also reactive to what was actually happening – one example being Mikkelsen collecting a brand-new Polo R WRC from VW’s museum in Wolfsburg after a crash at Rally Finland.

Which points to another vital aspect: the videos were self-deprecating. In the wake of VW’s sudden decision to leave the WRC in 2016, Rally The World didn’t produce a heartfelt tribute but instead a skit where the 2017 Polo WRC was to be revealed to the world but a magician performed and made the car disappear, and couldn’t bring it back.

This tone and attitude was key to achieving the success that the campaign ultimately did.

“Probably people would have expected that we would be, let’s say, more like a typical German team: very concentrated, very straightforward, not too nice and probably not with a lot of humor,” Dietzel smiles.

“But what also came into this was Jost Capito, with his way of leading a team and how to see things and how to lead a team, brought some very important aspects in the team that we were very open, that we were friendly, that we were approachable, and that we also were able to laugh about ourselves, so not taking ourselves too seriously.

“I think that is one core value of his leadership philosophy, and then that also influenced of course the communication, because with such a team principal, it’s easier to do funny and innovative stuff than having somebody who’s only, let’s say, very performance-minded.

“It gave us, let’s say, a large playing field of funny things, of classic sporting communication, because Rally The World is one thing, like having these shorts before shorts were invented, and the idea of funny videos to approach a new target group.

“But at the same time to really give a lot of information and content to the rally community, to the classic rally fans and to the motorsport fans and also to the media army. And I think in the end it was somehow fitting together.”

You need only look at the success of Hyundai’s Grand Theft Auto VI trailer recreation at the top of this year to understand the power good marketing material can have.

That appealed to rally fans because it featured characters it knew well in an unfamiliar scenario, but jumping on the GTA hype train and delivering a humorous and high-quality production allowed non-rally people to find and appreciate it.

This is the precise mix Volkswagen got so right – but like anything, it took trial and error to perfect the output.

“One of the key targets was to transfer the sport in a different way than had been done before,” Dietzel explains.

“In the first year there was a campaign that was, to be honest, not as successful as we all hoped for, but it was also good. You have to admit this, that also if you take a very new approach with new producers, an agency, whatever, for everybody it’s a learning curve how to do it. So the very first part of the campaign was not working that well.

“Then there were changes with people coming into the team that were, let’s say, a bit more like a mixture – they had experience in motorsport, but also in entertainment. So in the beginning, the first campaign was mainly done with people who were not so much involved in motorsport, so it was a bit too far away from motorsport to be authentic, because, I mean, you can do funny things, but at the same time, you must not lose the hardcore rally fans.

“The idea of doing fun things was there before, but putting the driver into a fun situation like, for example, Ogier grilling a steak on the engine or sitting in a Finnish sauna, whatever that was – this came because there were people doing it that came a bit more from different worlds.

“Very soon you could see that these videos were working, because it was not only on social media, even people in the service park came and said, ‘Look, what a great video’. So that really worked also internally.”

Internally in the WRC, but also inside Volkswagen too.

“You must not forget that you have a big company behind you where you always have people who like motorsport, but of course you also have people who are not interested or probably say, ‘We don’t need this, what does it mean?'” Dietzel continues.

“So also in this direction, Rally the World was helpful because we also made it internally accessible for people. There were a lot of videos where there was no driver involved at all,

“Very early we started to show the people behind the project and not only the drivers because mean we are Volkswagen; it was not only a product related campaign like promoting the Polo, it was of course an image activity to increase, or to improve, the image of the company and to show that we are proud of the people who are working in this team.

“We had the flexibility and some of them really, let’s say, got a little bit famous and we even, for one of the mechanics as a joke, printed some autograph cards in the end! But it was also some kind of appreciation towards the team; that their performance, that their work is also appreciated to the outside world.

“They all contribute to this success because rallying is a complex sport. You probably know better than me that it has a lot of aspects and you need a lot of people working together. We always tried to show this in every direction.”

What really astounds me, however, is how ahead of the curve Volkswagen was (and, by extension, its competition at the time) in what it was doing.

In research for this feature, I spent more time than I should probably admit scrolling through all the videos on X (where the account still exists) as if I was casually flicking through TikTok.

But we cannot forget that Volkswagen was doing this 10 years ago – at a time when TikTok didn’t exist and the media landscape was entirely different.

And that’s stunning, when you consider that what it created would not look one jot out of place as a media offering today.

Dietzel is naturally proud of the success Rally The World achieved, and spoke with such passion about his involvement in rallying.

“I don’t always like talking about things that happened in the past, but I will always enjoy talking about the WRC,” he tells me.

But there is the inevitable sadness that the project ended so early that tinges everyone’s memories of Volkswagen.

However Dietzel is a doer, not a reflector, and has a potential plan up his sleeve to combat that.

“Everybody from a mechanic to a driver to Jost Capito to the security guy, everyone who was involved will keep this time in mind as probably the best time of their life in motorsport, but unfortunately it then came to an end far too early for everyone,” he says.

“It was a pity but I mean everything is sooner or later, everything coming to an end probably except Ferrari in Formula 1. But of course what still is a bit sad is of course that we finished the car for 2017 and I’m pretty sure that this car would have been very successful too, but we will never know.

“This year it was 50 years of Golf and next year is 50 years of Polo, and I really hope that we find a way… I don’t know yet where, when or how but I still hope that we manage to give the ’17 car a very late world premiere or something like that.

“When the WRC project was stopped, we still finished one car and even gave it its livery that was planned for 2017. So this car is still there and is ready to run, it’s drivable. And I really hope that we find a way to give this car also an opportunity to be shown in public somehow next year just to show it to the people.

“Of course I’m still in contact with many people from the team and I think for many of the former team members, it would be great to see this car at least running once.”