In Norway, Škoda finds itself as a challenger in the automotive market as Tesla and Volkswagen dominates the EV sector. Recognizing the need to distinguish itself both internationally and locally, Škoda embarked on its most extensive rebranding in three decades in 2023. This introduced a new design profile, a revamped logo, and most importantly the new position "Let’s Explore."

However, Škoda isn't the only car brand that associate their brand to adventure and exploration. To stand out in a competitive market and build brand resilience, Škoda needed to show a genuine and fresh take on exploration that could tap into the Norwegians love for traveling.

We launched Škoda Mystery Trips – a free web-based AI service that can generate millions of unique and personalized travel route combinations. By curating Norway's largest travel database and integrating natural language processing, the AI plans customized day trips based on your needs, eliminating the need for planning. To add a real sense of exploration, and set us apart from ordinary travel planners, the places you’ll end up are kept a mystery until you arrive at your destination.

To develop the service, we first needed to assemble Norway’s largest travel database. We gathered data from reliable sources such as Visit Norway (attractions and activities), UT (hiking trails), and Google Places (restaurants). Once all the data had been extracted, they were put into a vector database that links destinations based on attributes.

The database is alive, retrieving new destinations daily from the sources. This means it dynamically adapts to users' evolving preferences and seasonal variations, ensuring evergreen value.

Additionally, we integrated external APIs for real-time updates such as weather forecasts from Norwegian Meteorological Institute. This ensures that Mystery Trips won't send a family to a beach when the thermometer reads minus 3 degrees celsius and snow.

METHODS AND PROCESS

The development of the service pushed the boundaries of digital craft within the integration of large data sets and AI. First we needed to assemble Norway’s largest travel database. We gathered data from sources such as Visit Norway (attractions and activities), UT (hiking trails), and Google Places (restaurants), and by using a customized GPT-4 we organized unstructured data to align with user input. With an ordinary algorithm we would have had to manually tag attributes for thousands of destinations. The database is also alive, retrieving new destinations daily from the sources.

Additionally, we integrated real-time weather updates from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. This ensures that Mystery Trips won't send a family to a beach when the thermometer reads minus 3 degrees celsius and snow.

TOUCH POINTS

All the user has to do is to enter a start address, personal interests and additional travel information, and the service can generate millions of personalized mystery trips in under 10 seconds.

If you use the service on desktop, swiftly send the route to your phone, which then again can talk to your car's navigation system. Newer models support direct access through the car’s web browser.

BRAND RELEVANCE

As you don’t buy a car every day, it’s crucial to establish early brand presence – especially with prospective customers. By offering the service for free and making it accessible to all car owners, regardless of brand, we ensure widespread engagement with Škoda.

In return for engaging with the brand, outdoorsy Norwegians are rewarded with personal Mystery Trips in return. And since the database constantly retrieves new destinations, the service dynamically adapts to users' evolving preferences and seasonal variations, ensuring evergreen value.

The low barrier to use the service is also key to the campaign’s impact. In the weeks following the launch we achieved:

Adventurous Norwegians went on over 10,000 unique Mystery Trips

Over 20,000 active hours have been spent engaging with the brand.

Over 1,2 million kilometers of Norwegian roads have been explored with Škoda

On the service itself we’ve achieved an 88% engagement rate, meaning when people first visited the site – they’ve also used it.

It has also been picked up by one of Norway's largest newspapers (Aftenposten), as one of the travel tools Norwegians use in 2024.

The service has captured the interest of multiple Škoda departments across Europe, and we are now working on how to implement it in several countries. Since the service is easily scalable, all we need to do is gather new data sets from each country.