ABOUT

The AA. We’ve been providing Britain with breakdown assistance for over a century. We have 14 million customers; our patrols attend 9000 callouts per day, and decades of iconic marketing campaigns have cemented the AA in Britain’s consciousness as THE breakdown brand. 
But this is about how moved the brand on – in fact, about the biggest evolution in the AA’s history.  
In the rear-view mirror, things seemed to be trundling along nicely - The AA was trusted and popular, a British institution and a market leader. But it was a different story under the bonnet. The brand was seen as old-fashioned, especially by younger people, for whom driving and owning a car has less positive cultural resonance or functional necessity. Endless price promotions in a commoditized market were seriously threatening our premium positioning. Our communications weren’t making Roadside feel different or better value. And we were missing opportunities for growth by focusing so much on breakdown, rather than our other businesses such as driving lessons.
So we defined a bold new vision: to be a brand built for every moment in your driving world. The goal was to drive growth in our core – breakdown cover (or as we call it, Roadside) - and highlight our other services too. This meant uniting individual business unit teams to act as one, modern, customer-focused, multi-service brand.  
This set a seemingly impossible brief for the creative strategy. The core of the challenge was to grow Roadside AND position the AA as multi-service. We had to overcome the massive gravitational force of our Roadside fame; while simultaneously increasing it.  
We also had to unite the entire AA ecosystem of diverse businesses under one brand idea and make the brand appeal equally to customers old and new, young and old.  In essence, we had to move from “think AA – think breakdown” to “think AA = think driving”. 

We did all this by making the creative strategy mirror the business strategy: as the business put the customer at the heart, so did we.  In general, past AA communication was all about us - “Be With The Best”; “The 4th emergency service” - and even when we showed customers in ads, it was us rescuing them, we were the hero. For this new chapter, we built everything around our customers.: their needs; feelings and driving lives.  
We defined a new brand purpose that put the customer at its heart. We activated that purpose by combining rich insights from cultural understanding and social listening, leading to our new brand promise to keep our customers ahead of the rapidly-changing driving world: When You’re With The AA, You’re Always Ahead. The creative platform features a new fluent device line: “It’s OK, I’m With The AA” - capturing the feeling of being an AA customer- and new narratives focusing on exaggerated versions of AA customer experiences. 
We took risks: we showcased bank robbers and adulterous lovers as AA members. We adopted a mischievous, surreal new tone. We used humour: always subjective and could have led to accusations of making light of difficult situations. At 119 years old, we hung out with the cool kids. And we said a giant swirling vortex was a better option than Swindon, which absolutely incensed The Swindon Advertiser.
We increased: 
brand preference, especially amongst younger drivers
awareness of, and propensity to buy, the AA as a multi-service proposition 
sales across the individual non-Roadside businesses  
consideration and purchase of Roadside, especially amongst younger drivers 
retention of existing members and perception that the AA rewards loyalty 

Seatbelt on? Car snacks handy? Let’s get on the road…