By now you would have heard that Volkswagen’s “The Fun Theory” won the Cannes Cyber Grand Prix for a digitally led integrated campaign, it won along side Nike’s “Chalk Bot” who took out the award for the other digital solutions / digital channels category in the Cyber section.
The Fun Theory was all about generating interest in Volkswagen’s Blue Motion technologies that deliver the same great car performance with reduced environmental impact, and to do this, they found an insight around how “fun” could change human behavior for the better, and this formed The Fun Theory, a campaign that spawned over 700 user generated Fun Theory initiatives along with a number of big viral hits that generated over 20 million YouTube views, with one rushing past 12 million views alone!
So did they sell more cars?
Yeah I mean awesome, make some stairs into a piano and make a bin into an arcade machine – with no connection to the product AT ALL.
We couldn’t pitch this to a client, they’d say and the connection to the product is where!? no logos, no copy, nothing… the take away from this experience has nothing at all to do with VW. No one would have bought a VW based on these ambient executions…
So they made some viral videos of the experiences… great. But as far as the people interacting with them and thinking VW. No.
[...] The Fun Theory was all about generating interest in Volkswagen’s Blue Motion technologies that deliver the same great car performance with reduced environmental impact, and to do this, they found an insight around how “fun” could change human behavior for the better, and this formed The Fun Theory, a campaign that spawned over 700 user generated Fun Theory initiatives. – Digital Buzz Blog [...]