Dacia - an international brand?

Behind this success lies both the inventiveness and diligence of the Romanian workers and engineers, but also the trust and financial support of the Renault company. Basically, the privatization of the Romanian manufacturer in 1999, through the acquisition by Renault of 51% of Dacia’s stake, the brand moves gradually forward toward international fame.

The most popular models produced by Dacia, the Logan, Sandero and Duster, are launched under the Renault brand. In addition, if in 2000 only 2% of the cars produced at the Mioveni plant were destined for export, after 2010, the percentage rose to 92%, Dacia being purchased in over 44 countries.

Moreover, one thing that is downright surprising for a Romanian brand is the marketing strategy of Dacia, which alternates the classical methods - an emphasis on the excellent relationship between quality and price, through which, in the early 2000s, the brand was able to enter the markets of Western Europe – with modern promotional techniques, such as sponsoring a football team. The latter is a tactic more and more utilized by large international brands, because football is still the most watched sport worldwide.  However, extensive visibility is not ensured anywhere.

For example, sponsoring a Romanian team would not produce a satisfactory exposure for the manufacturer. Therefore, Dacia rightfully oriented itself towards the Italian championship (Serie A), one of the strongest in the world, signing in 2008 a sponsorship contract with Udinese.

It must be said that, the Udinese team is not one of the top Italian football clubs, but, on one hand, it is a team with a constant presence in the Italian first division, while on the other hand, it does not require the investment that Juventus, AC Milan or Inter Milan would have probably requested. The success of this strategy is given not only by the already eight years of collaboration between the two parties, but also by a new agreement signed earlier this year, by which Udinese’s new stadium, with 25,000 seats, will be named Dacia Arena.

According to the official website of the team, the Romanian carmaker will pay around EUR 500,000 per year so that the arena keeps this name. This automatically includes the Dacia Arena in the list of top sponsored stadiums in Europe alongside the famous Etihad stadium (home to Manchester City), the Emirates stadium (home Arsenal London), the Allianz arena (home to Bayern Munchen), or the Signal Iduna stadium (home to Borussia Dortmund).

Source: http://www.udinese.it/