Campaign Overview

When Citroën South Africa prepared to launch the Basalt, its first SUV-Coupé for the local market, the brief wasn't simply to announce a new car. It was to give a genuinely different-looking vehicle a reason to stand out in a segment where most new entrants look, sound and sell themselves the same way.

Leading the campaign for the agency, I built and ran a teaser strategy that introduced the Basalt piece by piece - through its lights, wheels and interior textures - across social, digital, out-of-home, radio and earned media, well ahead of the car's full reveal or confirmed pricing.

The Challenge

South Africa's compact SUV segment has become the country's default family-vehicle category, and that popularity comes at a cost: differentiation. Practical, versatile and increasingly indistinguishable from one another, compact SUVs were exactly the kind of category where a new model risked disappearing on day one if it competed purely on features.

The stakes were higher than a single launch. The Basalt was joining the C3 and Aircross to give Citroën a three-model presence in a segment where SUVs now account for more than half of new passenger vehicle sales in South Africa, meaning the campaign needed to sharpen the brand's overall position in its highest-volume category, at a point when full specification and pricing weren't yet available to lean on.

The Strategic Approach

The strategic decision was to lead with design rather than data - a deliberate bet that emotional recognition would do more to build appetite than a features race the brand was unlikely to win on price alone against a wave of value-focused Chinese entrants.

Rather than open with Citroën's positioning statement - a vehicle built on the brand's Simple, Comfortable, Sustainable, Daring values - the campaign built toward it. Signature lights, alloy wheels and interior textures were shot and released as standalone "pieces," under the line "You'll want a piece of it," so that audiences would recognise the Basalt's character on the street - its raised stance, practical footprint, coupé roofline - before ever seeing the full car or a spec sheet.

Delivering that on a tight timeline and budget meant the production approach itself had to be reconsidered. I pushed for an AI-driven production technique, piloting a combination of traditional shoot craft with AI tools that hadn't been used by the agency in this way before - a decision made specifically to protect creative quality without the cost and lead time a fully conventional shoot would have demanded.

Execution

The teaser rolled out across social, digital, out-of-home, radio and earned media, with each piece of creative built to work as a standalone moment of intrigue rather than a fragment of a bigger, unseen picture. The staggered reveal of individual design details - rather than a single packshot-led announcement - was what earned the campaign its cut-through, later drawing specific praise from external publications for choosing texture and detail over the conventional full-vehicle reveal.

My Role

As senior account manager, I took full ownership of this campaign end to end, holding the client relationship, agency coordination, budget, timeline and stakeholder sign-off in their entirety.

That ownership was tested directly on shoot day, when my local client fell suddenly and unexpectedly ill. I rose to the moment, stepping in as custodian of the brand from both sides of the table: making the calls a client would ordinarily make, while continuing to run the agency's delivery of the shoot, so production stayed on schedule and on brief without compromising what the client needed to see. It was a moment that called for sound judgement under pressure, and I made sure the day's outcome reflected well on both the brand and the agency.

Beyond that moment, the role demanded managing local and global Citroën stakeholders in parallel, giving both the confidence to back a genuinely new production technique under real budget and timeline pressure. Being the steady, trusted point of contact throughout, for local and global stakeholders alike, was central to the agency successfully piloting this first-of-its-kind approach.

Key Skills Demonstrated

• Strategic Account Leadership

• Client Partnership (Local & Global Stakeholder Management)

• Crisis Management & Brand Custodianship

• Production Innovation (AI-Assisted Techniques)

• Budget & Timeline Ownership

• Automotive Marketing

• Integrated Campaign Execution

Outcome

The campaign achieved what it set out to do: it gave the Basalt a distinct entry point into a crowded segment, and did so through a production model that protected creative ambition against real budget and timeline constraints. The design-led teaser approach was picked up and praised by external publications specifically for differentiating the car from segment competitors through detail and texture rather than conventional full-vehicle packshots, validation that the strategic bet paid off before a single spec sheet was published.