Audi of America is getting into the film business to promote its racing program—and its high-performance diesel powertrains. The Herndon, Va. company is promoting a 96-minute documentary called “Truth in 24” about Audi’s race-development program leading up to the 24 Hours of Le Mans race. The 90-minute film, produced by NFL Films, has been making the festival circuit, but Audi is about to get much wider coverage, since it has inked a broadcast deal for the film with a major network.
“We wanted to come up with a way of telling the Audi racing story, but if you look at how other brands promote their racing programs, it’s often the corporate hospitality suite at the track, or corporate ads saying we won this or that race,” he says. “We realized that kind of marketing couldn’t tell the story.”
Keogh says that rather than doing its own corporate film or long-form ad, Audi went to NFL Films, although the company had no experience with racing. “Really, this thing to us comes down to human drama; we went to them because they are masters at telling the human story and creating drama. We had conversations, and they said we are interested if they could have 100% access—so we did that and took a huge risk, because if we didn’t win the race, it becomes a difficult documentary,” he says. The film, co-produced with Chicago-based Intersport, is narrated by action movie star Jason Statham.
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