Volkswagen – Visit The Road

Although you may have seen this case (or an earlier version of it) before, it is not until now that the strategic platform allows it to show it’s full potential. Over the last three years, Volkswagen has built a brand platform that centered on adding value to the core product – the experience of traveling with a VW California. Because while VW California once was the most liberating way to travel, restrictions on, and fines for, spending the night outside official camping sites are now limiting and preventing owners from experiencing the product as it was intentend.

Over time, the brand initiative went from an activation in collaboration with landowners to unlock some of the most beautiful locations in the country to the community, to a cross-channel, integrated brand loyalty initiative spanning all the way from digital experiences, down to the dealerships, and into the audience's lives.

With consistency and commitment to building brand affinity, the platform has transformed into a loyalty initiative that doesn’t just inspire the community and builds loyalty, but also recruits the next generation of drivers – a story of brand and product integration that has over time demonstrated why brand and sales are indeed stronger together.

Over the years, road tripping has become harder. Most European countries have introduced laws that prevent people from camping in the free. Being able to go where your heart desires, and spend the night alone in nature, is the essence of why VW California speaks to people. It was this feeling we needed to bring back to the community.
The objectives for the platform therefore were:
1. Drive loyalty by adding value to and creating engagement with the core camper van community
2. Remove barriers to fully enjoying and utilising the product in the real world, and as a result of that, increase propensity to visit the road with VW California
3. Create an incentive for a broader audience to discover and experience the campervan in the most liberating way possible
4. Drive traffic to the website and price list downloads – a powerful indicator of purchase intent, in turn driving both short and long term business growth

The last objective has become the most powerful reflection of the business impact of the initiative. Think with Google conducted a review of the most important digital touch points in relation to car purchase and uncovered that only one in three know exactly what car they're interested in when they start the shopping process. What follows is over 900 digital interactions, of which price research is an indication of being in the very last stages of consideration. It’s clear that in order to drive purchase intent and consideration, we needed to create high level relevance and a connected booking and digital journey that moved consumers into our digital ecosystem. And that’s exactly what we did.

Families with kids and couples represent the biggest sales volume, so we set out to understand how we could turn VW California into the ultimate travel experience for them. Field research and consumer interviews revealed that as the luxury campervan segment was growing, their satisfaction with the experience on the road was declining. With more people at the rest stops, fewer secluded places to spend the night and a clamp down from police on illegal overnight stays – more and more people reported feeling like the magic of VW California was gone.
This became our opportunity to garner the broad awareness and engagement we needed for the brand to defend its market position in years of explosive growth. We also knew that succeeding in this was not a question of quantity, but quality. That's why the booking campaign was pre-launched exclusively to die-hard VW California fans on a closed, nationwide Facebook page. By rewarding those who advocate for the brand with the most exclusive experiences otherwise unattainable to them, we were able to create the framework for long term engagement and relationship between the brand, the community and those dreaming of one day being part of it.

Think with Google revealed in 2021 that travelers who took a large trip in the past year spent an average of 71 percent of their time researching their trip online and more than half (57 percent) of those used an online source to get inspiration or ideas related to their trip. We used these insights to design a campaign flow that captured people's attention in the inspiration and booking phase, placing our ads on competitor booking sites like AirBnB and Booking.com.

We knew that giving a whole new generation of drivers their first taste of the freedom of the road and capturing the imagination of those who remember the road trip days of the 60s was going to take more than romanticizing the product.

To make VW California the holiday experience of choice, we wanted to demonstrate that a modern iteration of its essence – the feeling of travel with no bounds – had a relevant role to play in contemporary culture – one that thrives on freedom to pick our own paths.

Taking the iconic road trip experience from our collective past, extending it beyond the traditional remits of driving and into the category of holidaying, we created a cultural phenomenon that had the power to transcend generations.

In the campaign’s first year (2019), we faced big opportunities for growth, but also increased competition on the market. Over the three years that followed, the number of auto camper providers on the Danish market increased by 44%, from 70 autocamper players in 2019 to 125 autocamper players in 2021. At the same time, the travel and holiday category experienced one of its biggest crises ever – Covid19.

Over the three years, over 1200 people were given the opportunity to stay in a California Stay. And as the popularity of the experience grew, so did the interest among the broader public.

The magic of VW California cannot be told through an image or a video. It needs to be experienced. Our research into purchase drivers among the community revealed that word of mouth and the opportunity to travel with a VW California was the deciding factor in taking the plunge and investing in one.

Armed with this, we got to work extending the campaign and in 2021, we introduced Dreamers Stays – California Stays made available to those who had always dreamed of experiencing the magic of VW California, but who didn’t yet have access to one.

After a challenging year with travel restrictions and lockdowns, everyone was in more need than ever of a getaway. So we invited the public to nominate people who they thought deserved a magical stay away from the crowds, a generous act that engaged the community and drove awareness of the brand beyond loyalists.

And the nominations came from far and wide – families who hadn’t seen each other for a year, older couples who’d been housebound since the start of the pandemic and friends who had been separated. This resulted in 28 dreamers, selected on the basis of their compelling personal stories, given the opportunity to pick up a brand new VW California from the local dealership and go on a trip together. The car was fully kitted out with a picnic basket and provisions for the night, and the Dreamers could choose between a California Stay next to dramatic cliffs, by a private lake or in the middle of a magical forest.

By extending the campaign, we were able to bring a broader public into the VW California universe and leapfrog the biggest consideration drivers by providing a product demonstration like no other.

Winning the holiday category is more difficult than ever. While the options at our fingertips have become more ample, making the road the ultimate holiday destination for people requires creating top of mind awareness, and value – for longer. By monitoring conversations online, we pinpointed the key elements of travel booking and built our creative approach on the symbol that bore the strongest social currency – the desire to have access to exclusive and unique experiences. Using this as our springboard into wider cultural discourse, we leveraged the rise in popularity of staycations and local exploration to create a truly value-adding branded experience.

The key barrier to enjoying VW California as it was intended was seemingly out of our control – the government had introduced strict legislation making it illegal to spend the night outside an official camping site six years earlier, mirroring a move across Europe. But with something so critical to the enjoyment of the product getting in the way, we had to find a way around it.

So we partnered with private landowners all over the country to set up exclusive stays on their land, complete with portable loos, a cleaning service and a travel guide to the local area.

From a strategic perspective, the campaign set out to capture the hearts and minds of consumers by addressing the camper van as more than a mode of transportation. Instead, we framed it as a way to explore and connect with people and nature, creating unique memories all over Denmark.

All stays were fully booked within less than 48hours, three years in a row. The campaign had hit a nerve and driven our target audience to respond at record speed, sharing the campaign with friends and rushing to the website to book their unique stay.

At the end of 2021, we were converting 25% of all website visitors to a pricelist download. Of these, 27.5% were generated through paid media (Facebook, Instagram & Youtube) as a result of the campaign. Looking at paid media conversions alone, 15% of all website visitors generated through paid media went on to download the pricelist (Industry Automotive benchmark: 2%, source: Ruleranalytics.com).

Additionally, we've seen an average CTR well above industry benchmarks (0.60%, source: wordstream.com) of 1.26 per year throughout the three year campaign period. This is a powerful indicator that we were able to understand what our audience wanted from the brand, and translate that insight into content that delivered ROI on the paid media effort and created a high level of relevance.

Through all of this, we were able to demonstrate that the campaign generated high-quality leads that translated into clear actions by our audience and critical steps towards trial and purchase completion.

Looking concretely at sales indicators and market share, the market has grown more competitive with over 55 new players entering the field in the last three years. Nevertheless, VW California has remained the most sold, and most popular auto camper in Denmark.
Volkswagen California had a factual market share increase of 6% during the campaign period. With a category growth of 186% and with 44% new players compared to the year prior to the campaign, the 2021 market share of 28% indicates a continued strong position for Volkswagen California on the market. Furthermore, Volkswagen California saw a whooping 153% uplift in sales during the three year period. The impressive sales numbers throughout the campaign periods are in direct correlation to the large numbers of website visits and pricelist downloads generated through the campaign, and through a relatively small media spend.

Visit the Road has also generated press coverage in over 24 publications and made national news, with a return on investment of over 1544%, and over 12 million impressions on social media - all with a media spend of 28,711 Euro per year.