As a challenger brand, Huawei needed an idea powerful enough to create disruption in an already competitive landscape and that would communicate to media and consumers, the sheer intelligence of its technology.

So why not see if in the space of five weeks it could teach its smartphone to pilot a car?! To do this, Huawei pushed the boundaries of their object recognition technology and put its AI-powered devices to the test. The resulting Road Reader project proved Huawei as the first manufacturer to make smartphone technology so intelligent it could power a driverless vehicle.

Unlike other driverless cars, which simply detect obstacles, Huawei created an intelligent vehicle that didn’t just see, but crucially, understood its surroundings. They taught it to distinguish between different objects and learn to take the most appropriate action. Huawei then let media take the passenger’s seat at MWC… just five weeks after setting the challenge.

With the creative idea and strategy in place, Huawei started to work on the technology that underlies the campaign. First updating the car to allow it to be robotically controlled and then creating the communication method that allows the phone to tell the car how to react. Once the technology was in place, the team released a film ahead of MWC to drive excitement around the campaign.

As the buzz grew, Huawei invited media attending MWC to take part in the live demonstration. Over 145 media were escorted to the iconic Camp Nou at FC Barcelona where they were greeted with a Huawei Mate 10 Pro on the dashboard of a Porsche Panamera. The experience was designed to show how the AI works by giving each journalist two runs in the vehicle – one that portrayed the learning capabilities of the technology and one that put it to the test.

In just under two months’ time, Huawei put itself on the map with a world-first idea and execution. Before, during and after MWC the wires were buzzing about a driverless car piloted by a smartphone and the possibilities of mobile AI technologies.

This world-first PR experience told a tech story that captured the imagination of media and created a flurry of premium coverage from 66 countries that reached 6.9 billion people.

Full results include:

- Over 4,300 articles from 66 countries

- Reaching over 6.9 billon people

- Aided brand awareness rose over 10% during the 2-week campaign period from yearly average

- Unaided awareness went up nearly 6% during the 2-week campaign period

- The brand image key attribute ‘has strong innovation ability’ went up nearly 10%

- The film reached 63 million people’s newsfeeds