The Volkswagen brief was to relaunch the new 2013 Beetle in Brazil. But we decided to do something different: to relaunch the FUSCA, the Brazilian name of the country’s most beloved car.

We knew we could rely on the strength of PR right from the beginning, so the next step was to surprise the whole market by “going back” to the 70s and relaunching the Fusca during the golden age of the car in Brazil.

With actions on TV, press, digital and social media, the impact of the “past relaunch” was immediate, proving that the strength of a brand can be combined with a creative strategy to go beyond traditional media and generate much more PR.

The relaunch of the Fusca in Brazil started generating buzz in 2012, after the car’s name was chosen. On October 22, the car was officially introduced to the public and specialized media at the São Paulo Auto Show.

Then, we started running the campaign with teasers made up of classic YouTube videos that were dubbed to give the impression that they addressed the relaunch of the car. On February 19, 2013, TV commercials started being broadcast and, for four weeks, the PR on the relaunch “in the past” comes back and has an immediate impact on social media networks.

During the four stages, the relaunch “in the past” followed the initial planning and reached the goal of going beyond traditional media. It also generated PR and, as a consequence, lots of spontaneous media for the brand.

The results of the relaunch “in the past” can be divided in several stages.

The strategy of naming the car Fusca automatically raised awareness and generated spontaneous media. After all, Fusca is more than just a name — it’s the most important car brand in the history of Brazil.

The relaunch campaign had extraordinary results. Teasers had over 1.5 million views on YouTube and TVCs alone generated R$4,200,000 in spontaneous media.

The hashtag #fusca was a trending topic on social networks. A single post on the launch of the car had more than 34 thousand shares, 120 likes and 28 million impacts. These are the best results in the history of Facebook in Brazil.

The communication efforts resulted in a 60% increase in leads on the Volkswagen website. And the successful relaunch of the Fusca had a positive impact in other VW models as well.