Skoda In Manila!!

[c_cube]

ok mga units nila ha, lahat may diesel variant. sa tingin ko pwedeng pwede sa market natin to pag ok ang pricing dito. kung may capital and machineries lang ako i would be interested to be a dealer of skoda hehehehehehe. naisip ko lang, magkano kaya ang puhunan na kelangan para magparating at maging dealer ng isang car company? how many 0's kaya makikita ko? hahahaha

[basti08]

that's nice. more choices, more fun. but i think if they are in hunt of a dealer to carry the Skoda, i think they should approach PGA to carry it. it would be a good budget VW alternative here and with a dealership background that handles Audi and VW, that should reduce scare of a new nameplate risk.

[ptk675]

As long as they bring in the Skoda Octavia vRS, I'll be satisfied...

amen to that

[Kurusaki]

Hey hoover,

How soon will it be on the phil. market?

I'm planning to buy a car this december, I think I'll pass...

I only wish the Fabia would be offered here...

[badkuk]

i saw a skoda once while double parked along G4. parang diplomatic plates ata nakakabit. kinda cool actually, definitely one of a kind(well, not for long if somebody gets a dealership)

[AG4]

that's nice. more choices, more fun. but i think if they are in hunt of a dealer to carry the Skoda, i think they should approach PGA to carry it. it would be a good budget VW alternative here and with a dealership background that handles Audi and VW, that should reduce scare of a new nameplate risk.

Does PGA handle the VW brand now?
Anyway, it would be nice if they handle it...

I'd like to see the Octavia 2.0 FSI (150PS) and the 2.0 TDi (140PS) here...

its a 5-door sedan...

...its roughly the same size as a Civic.

I'm guessing this euro car would at least cost P200K to P300K more than the ASEAN built/ RP assembled 2.0 liter sedans sold here.

The Fabia which kinda looks like a Suzuki Swift is also nice, but I doubt it would be able to match the P700K+ prices of its Japanese rivals.


Its odd that the one interested in bringing in the brand here is Skoda UK (UK branch/distributor of Skoda) and not Skoda Auto of the Czech Republic.

[jpdm]

I think hindi magprosper yan dito parang yung volkswagen kasi mahal at yari ka sa maintenance. Another fiat and proton in the making. Subaru nga Japanese, di nauso rito.

Yung mga Nissan, Hyundai, Mitsubishi at Suzuki vehicles nga hindi umuusad ang benta.

Skoda pa kaya ng Czech Republic?

[vctradingcubao]

Dati daw, tampulan ng bad jokes ang Skoda, pero dami na nabago since then. A really good marketing campaign helped them. This is from http://www.marketingpower.com/content16161S1.php

[SIZE=1]Marketing News, February 18, 2002[/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]Normally, garnering 98% awareness for a brand is a marketer's dream. But for Chris Hawken, marketing manager for Milton Keynes, England-based car manufacturer Skoda UK, a division of Czech Republic-based Skoda Auto, it only compounded his problems: As he started his new job at the end of 1998, the Skoda brand was universally known in England -- as a worthless, low-end car shunned by British consumers. In a February 2000 survey, 60% of respondents said they wouldn't consider buying one. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]Skodas are sold throughout Europe, as well as in parts of Asia and Latin America, but they had a uniquely egregious reputation among the persnickety U.K. consumers. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]Shorthand for "terrible" for years, Skoda was the butt of a whole genre of British jokes, with no fewer than three Web sites dedicated to such wisecracks as, "How do you double the value of a Skoda? Fill it with gas." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]Its reputation was rooted in the car's Communist past: After World War II, the Czechoslovakian car company was nationalized by the Communist regime and began to churn out low-quality cars. In 1991, German-based Volkswagen AG bought it and transformed the car, winning "best in class" car awards and the accolades of motor journalists, but the British public was unmoved, and as the jokes and jibes continued, so did anemic sales. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]Meanwhile, Volkswagen had set sales goals for Skoda that called for the company to increase worldwide volume to more than 500,000 cars annually by the end of 2002, up from 380,000 a year at the end of the '90s -- which meant far more aggressive targets for Skoda in the United Kingdom, the car manufacturer's fifth-largest market. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]In the face of such tremendous disparity between the product and its image, Hawken, who had arrived at Skoda from VW in December 1998, decided bolstering car sales would require nothing short of changing the entire country's perception of the car. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]In a radical break from Skoda's previous marketing strategies, Skoda UK confronted head-on the car's negative image using subtle, intelligent humor, targeting Skoda "rejectors" -- those who say they wouldn't consider buying a Skoda -- rather than existing owners. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]With giant aspirations and a miniscule budget, the marketing team created self-deprecating, down-to-earth TV ads that challenged assumptions about the brand and anchored the integrated, albeit barebones, campaign. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]Public relations played a critical supplemental role, creating buzz among influential mainstream journalists, while the third element, direct mail, also used humor to invite prospects who resembled the attitudinal profile of Skoda owners, as well as existing customers, to test-drive the new car. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]"It's not the way you normally sell a car; you sell on features, not on humor. But if Skoda had done a typical car ad, talked about its electric windows and whatever, it wouldn't have (had) the same impact," says Ray Perry, director of marketing for the Chartered Institute of Marketing, a Berkshire, England-based marketing association. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]Skoda UK understands that better than most companies. In 1998, it launched a new mid-sized car called Octavia. Aimed at existing owners, the marketing campaign showed off the car's best features and sounded a serious, confident tone: "The new Skoda Octavia. The way things should be." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]Yet, despite a much-improved product, Skoda UK's largest marketing budget ever and a whole range of marketing activities, the '98 campaign generated an increase in overall sales of just 6% in the first year and only minimally changed perceptions. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]Determined not to repeat the past, Hawken's first move was to withdraw from the brand's European agency arrangements, paving the way for a campaign tailored to the problematic U.K. audience. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]Hawken brought on a new team of London firms, led by the London-office of advertising agency Fallon, of Minneapolis-based Fallon Worldwide (formerly Fallon McElligot), along with London-based public relations firm Sputnik Communications and direct marketing agency Archibald Ingall Stretton (AIS), also of London. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]The branding campaign, which the team decided would tee off the March 2000 launch of a new hatchback, the Fabia, as well as the re-release of the Octavia later that year, faced an immediate hurdle: The marketing budget available was only £ 4.5 million (about US$ 7 million), well below its deep-pocketed competitors, who spent two to three times as much marketing their cars. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]Hawken cut several elements from the typical mix, including event marketing and sponsorships, and focused on three areas: advertising, public relations and direct marketing. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]"We had to focus on a few things that would make a difference, where we'd see the greatest impact," Hawken says. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]With almost the entire country as the target audience (having been identified as "Skoda rejectors"), advertising -- primarily through TV -- became the driving force behind the image-changing campaign, with Skoda pumping about 75% of its media spend into it. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]"If you really want to change people's ideas about a brand quickly, you have to do it through TV," Hawken says. (With far fewer channel options than in the United States, the medium in England is especially effective at reaching large portions of the population.) [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]The five ads showcasing Fabia and Octavia -- which appeared during popular mainstream programs from March 2000 until September 2001 -- were shot documentary-style, and featured characters in situations in which they assumed that, because the Fabia or Octavia looked so good, they couldn't be Skodas. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]"What the humor does is own up to this bad image that the brand has, and portrays Skoda as honest and down-to-earth," says Chris Hirst, client services director at Fallon who works on the Skoda account. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]In one ad, a distraught parking attendant reports to a man returning to his car, "I'm afraid some little vandal has stuck a Skoda badge on the front of your car." In another, shot on-site, a pompous English dignitary on a tour of a Skoda factory showers praise on the new plant as well as on the car. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]At the end of the tour, he whispers to the guide, "I hear you make those funny little Skoda cars, too." Each ad ended with the tag line, "It's a Skoda. Honest." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]According to research from Fallon, the ads showcasing the Fabia achieved 50% awareness, six percentage points higher than the closest competitor, the Fiat Punto, which gained 44% ad awareness. And as the campaign continued, awareness increased: A later Skoda ad, featuring the Octavia, was remembered by 70% of respondents, 84% of whom believed the ad made its point in a clever way. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]"The ads stood out against the backdrop of so many bland car ads," Hawken says. "The British . . . appreciate the humor." [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]With a limited budget, however, Skoda couldn't just blanket the airwaves with its commercials. Instead, it relied on a precisely timed integrated public relations effort to generate the necessary buzz and momentum around the campaign. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]In the past, Skoda bad focused its PR on motoring journalists. But the marketing team realized that these niche journalists, while all writing glowing reviews of the cars, weren't changing consumers' minds about Skoda. "They're not brand influencers; they're product influencers," Hirst says. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]So this time around, Sputnik handpicked independent-minded and influential journalists from major consumer publications, including The Guardian daily newspaper, and the weekly London-based magazine The Spectator, who they hoped would champion Skoda's rebirth. In the weeks leading up to the March launch, Sputnik lent the select journalists Skodas to drive and also gave them a sneak preview of the ads. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]"At the time the ads broke, we had these fantastic articles coming out," says Lucy Rickett, account director with Sputnik. "We had articles about Skoda's shift even before there was an effect on sales" -- with headlines such as, "History's biggest comeback since Bobby Ewing stepped out of the shower. Skoda is hip and ***y -- yes, ***y," from the large daily newspaper, The Mirror. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]The initial rash of positive articles made other journalists jump on the bandwagon, and Rickett says that the PR generated hundreds of positive articles and mentions during the campaign. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=1]Another PR benefit was that Skoda could use it to make serious claims about the brand's success that wouldn't have fit with the ads' humor, Rickett says. Besides, she adds, "What we wanted viewers to take away from the ads is the fact that these are just beautiful-looking cars." [/SIZE]

[AG4]

Skoda pa kaya ng Czech Republic?

Yes. still from the Czech Republic, but since 1991 its been part of VW (Volkswagen Group).
All new Skodas share the same technology and platforms as their VW counterparts, so its basically a more affordable VW.

[chuaed]

TOP GEAR Skoda Fabia VRS vs Mini Cooper

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P1IEWcGrtw"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P1IEWcGrtw[/ame]

who do you think wins?