Because we used Facebook and Twitter as alternative content platforms, we didn’t have to deal with any restrictions or regulations, outside the regular Facebook and Twitter regulations.

We created a Facebook application that allowed followers to navigate the car on a 1-day user led tour around the Netherlands using hash tag: #ds5race. Dutch TV presenter and rally driver Froukje de Both and her co-pilot asked the crowd in which direction the car should go: left or right, Rotterdam or Amsterdam? The Facebook app turned these Twitter answers into directions for the driver by calculating them into a percentage (73% left and 27% right). The most prolific Tweeter won the car by directing the drivers to his/her location. The one-day race started in Amersfoort on November 17th at 9am. At 5pm it stopped. The nearest Twitter user won. On the Facebook page 2 live streaming cams kept the audience up to date. Google maps showed the position of the car. Hourly updates via Radio 538 also kept the audience informed and announced the winner at 5pm.

Millions of people got the opportunity to read about the innovative and exciting Dutch pre-launch of the new Citroën DS5. The extensive PR and buzz campaign generated an earned PR value of around €2.8m and 38m+ OTS. Additional activities included paid blogger outreach, Facebook ads and an official media partnership with Dutch radio station 538, also reaching hundreds of thousands of people. During the 1-day race, tweets poured in with an average of 524 an hour, making #DS5race trending topic no.1 in the Netherlands. The number of Facebook ‘likes’ on the Citroën NL-page increased by 30.7%. All of this put together, the unique pre-launch campaign brought the brand DNA of Citroën ‘Creative Technology’ alive and made the new Citroën DS5 the topic of conversation in the Netherlands.