Looking at Cars from a Different Perspective

Three years ago, Seat officially confirmed the launch of the new Cupra brand, presenting its new logo and giving a glimpse of what the sports car brand will become. “Now the time has come for CUPRA to gain its own soul, its own DNA, its own identity,” the automaker said. Describing itself as a “contemporary vision of sportiness” and as the redefinition of performance, of crafting and uniqueness, of the world of racing, and of sophistication and design, the new high-performance car division of the Seat Group revealed a new international visual identity developed by ad agency Droga5 London.

2020 was a good year for Cupra, maintaining its upward trend thanks to the Cupra Ateca and Cupra Leon’s strong performance as well as the market entry of the Cupra Formentor. For 2021, the brand plans to show that electrification and sportiness go hand-in-hand with the launch of the plug-in hybrid versions of the Cupra Formentor and its el-Born car, a 100% electric model.

Part of the new brand platform “Another Way,” Cupra’s new corporate and visual identity challenges “the conventions of design in the car category” and is built on a modular visual language, showing both the car and the driver from a different perspective. This approach is opposed to what we’ve been used to seeing in car advertising so far. In other words, the agency gave up on car ads clichés to focus more on people and vehicles. Thus, instead of featuring the same angles and generic empty road locations, the London-based agency decided to use boxed-out modules to give drivers and places the same prominence as the vehicle itself.

Speaking about this initiative, Chris Chapman, Head of Design at Droga5 London, said: “‘Another Way’ looks at the car from an unexpected perspective — one that provides a flexible visual language that elevates the context of the driver to the same level as the car itself.”

By putting the driver and car next to each other, the agency managed to set the vehicle in a more realistic environment. The agency’s work will be included in all communications for the Cupra brand, including eCRM, digital display, OOH, and print, and will be visible throughout Europe and Latin America.