When it comes to automotive brands, corporate communication topics are less likely to capture the attention of the audience compared to product-focused communication.

In 2023, the 75th anniversary of Porsche coincides with the first year after China's full lifting of COVID-19 restrictions, where numerous brands are actively communicating their messages. Standing out among the clutter and establishing a strong presence for the brand's "dream chasing" concept amidst this market noise will be a significant challenge in the communication process.

Additionally, the 75-year history of the brand contains a wealth of information, requiring a balance between comprehensive representation and highlighting key moments and representations. It is also essential to translate this rich content into a format that is easily perceivable and comprehensible to the audience, ultimately converting it into brand favorability. This is another significant challenge faced in this communication effort.

Among all the existing communication materials, we recall a hand-drawn painting. This painting was originally created by a Chinese automotive media and illustrator for Porsche's 70th birthday. It vividly showcases all of Porsche's model series, racing achievements, company milestones, and behind-the-scenes stories. In 2023, the illustrator added several elements to this hand-drawn painting to comprehensively summarize the 75-year history of the Porsche brand. Inspired by this, we designed a series of communication actions including online interactive games, offline pop-up experiential activities, media tours, release, social posts and feature stories, and souvenir etc. By leveraging the interactivity of online communication and the massive foot traffic of offline experiences, we aim to tell our story in a remarkable and integrated manner to ensure that the topic reaches the audience from multiple dimensions during the communication period.

In China, where digital is widespread, our strategy aims to make PR communication more engaging, accessible, and widely distributed. We seek to utilize various media means to connect with a diverse audience, ensuring a strong online-offline integration.

Core strategy: Focus on communication message ’Color the Dreams’, fully utilize the readability of the long scroll and the characteristics of different media channels, and extend multiple creative forms to communicate with the audience. Specific manifestations include:

- Interactivity: using eye-catching visuals, intriguing copywriting, and interactive mechanisms, to stimulate the audience's initiative to learn about behind-the-scenes stories and share them.

- Channels: through WeChat’s multiple touchpoints and the media matrix to further expand the communication influence. The O2O integration effect is further optimizes the communication performance.

- Media coverage: different categories of media including automotive, industry, fashion and luxury, lifestyle, racing, vertical portals, and KOLs to reach multiple user circles.

The initial concept emerged organically from the playful painting itself, with the aim of engaging a wide audience in a fun experience with Porsche. As we refined the concept, we actively collaborated with various departments, including Porsche internal staff, marketers, and car owners, to ensure a cohesive strategy.

We have created 10 captivating thematic articles with exquisite designs, as well as a series of posters and souvenirs to seamlessly transition the experience from online to offline.

From June 1st to June 18th, the campaign unfolded at a rapid pace. Two preview posts, followed by six in-depth posts and a 10-day offline event. We timed the content launch to capitalize on two high-profile moments.

Timeline

w1 brief and QA

w2-3 initial ideas and discussion with client

w4-7 discussion and confirm the proposal

w8-21 preparation and liaison with 3rd party, content development

w17-20 offline materials production

w20-22 media pitch

w22-24 event

Significant comm. results thanks to newsworthy topic matrix and successful media strategy. Chinese media contribute nearly half of the total social impact worldwide.

Livestream achieved the 5.7 million views among all the Porsche China livestream events thanks to the media boosting by 60 earned media.

The PR social accounts increased its followers by 36%, with a nearly 90% long-term retention rate. The long tail effect lasted for over 50 days, continuously influencing the audience.

Traditional wise

Clippings: 33,783

Gross reach: 3.59 billion

PR value: 4.86 billion RMB

Media tonality: positive/neutral >99.9%, negative <0.1% (the rainstorm caused event was canceled temporarily, which arouses dissatisfaction).

Media friends appreciate the opportunity to be part of this Porsche milestone but there is room for improvement in terms of event experience.

Social wise

- The interactive game encouraged users to collect 45 interesting facts about Porsche, and more than 28,000 users participated in. As a result, the digital game achieved over 118,000 interactions, was shared on the WeChat Moments over 400 times, and received an additional exposure up to 400,000 times.

- The 8 social posts provided comprehensive explanations of historical stories, including their origin, models, race results, CSR, etc. These posts were distributed in a media matrix and even integrated into the digital game, generating over 1,150,000 exposure.

- The offline event attracted the interest of a wider audience, with a total of 600,000 visitors.

- The commemorative items reached over 600 event participants, helping to promote further dissemination.