Launching into people’s livingrooms

In October 2019, Volvo revealed their first fully electric car. The vehicle reveal came a year ahead of customer availability. Normally new vehicle reveals are the center stage of car shows. However with the 2020 global pandemic locked-down, all the car shows were cancelled and all the showrooms were closed. So we had to figure out how to launch this exciting, new and innovative electric car without bringing drivers to car shows, showrooms and the dealerships.

Since everyone was stuck inside, we realized we had a unique opportunity to reach captive audiences like never before, and that’s when it clicked: We had to take our launch directly into people’s living rooms.

But figuring out how to deliver on the same level as an in-person experience wasn’t so simple. Dealerships exist for a reason. Faced with crafting a journey that could delight in the same way meant that we had to think bigger. We needed to find a means of telling our story that would be accessible, approachable, and most importantly, familiar to consumers.

Since people were spending more time in their homes and on their devices than ever before due to COVID, we designed a sophisticated inbox experience. We created a hyper-targeted email campaign to 100,000 select Volvo drivers, and teased them with exclusive and engaging content, increased their curiosity and brought them back to the brand’s site for more exclusive content.

By responding to a shifting consumer behavior with a creative solution and redefining the dealership experience for our campaign, this campaign campaign was quite a success. We had 51% unique open rate—twice the industry average—39% unique click to open rate—4X higher than the industry average—and, in the span of 4 months , 50,000 people engaged with the brand.

Bringing the showroom into people’s living rooms created a unique experience for our consumers while keeping them safe during the pandemic.

A startling insight

In 2021, Volvo discovered that Plug-in hybrid vehicle (PHEV) drivers, who purchased these vehicles to minimize their carbon footprint and help the environment, don’t charge their cars regularly, and fail to take advantage of the full benefits of the electric engine. Our challenge was helping them to change this behavior.

In order to make a behavioral change, we dived deep into the science of human behavior: What we learned is that it takes 21 days to form a new habit and when people invest their time in an activity, they want to feel an accomplishment, and be rewarded.

Our solution was to gamify PHEV experience for Volvo drivers in a way that changes their behaviour. To execute this idea, we’ve create an extension of the Volvo cars app that provides drivers with unique driving and charging challenges, progress updates, rewards, and the ability to support charitable organizations through their actions.