The potential audience that would have the financial ability to afford a Porsche are undeniably hard to find. However, when there is a hot drama that everyone is watching and talking about, this affluent group is no different. As we had to raise awareness and desirability we needed to behave drastically differently to the category – focus on the desirability factor of the brand, as opposed to car features. The idea was to partner with and take advantage of a cultural moment of popularity, riding on the back of a soap opera drama. This emotional association would lift awareness and desirability and subsequently sell cars. Furthermore the lack of obvious synergy between the soap opera and a high end car like Porsche, meant that we could stand out – in a distinctive way!

Phase 1: Ode to Joy New Panamera Placement

We leveraged the success of popular TV series Ode to Joy and its star Liu Tao, who drives a Panamera in the programme. We deepened/extended the product placement.

Phase 2: Liu Tao at New Panamera Asia Event in Shanghai

We invited Liu Tao as key spokesperson to the Asia Premiere event, its exclusive evening with Porsche and held a livestream broadcast with Liu Tao at the event.

Phase 3: Liu Tao New Panamera Configuration

On our official car configuration tool, “Andy’s car” (Liu Tao’s character from Ode to Joy) was the default pre-configuration. This strengthened the pop culture to model consideration.

Phase 4: Liu Tao in Leipzig VR Video

We invited Liu Tao to Germany to film three VR (virtual reality) films. In these, we showed Liu Tao visiting the birthplace of the New Panamera, explored Leipzig, and experienced the Porsche Museum.

Awareness increased significantly: Baidu Index for “Panamera” increased 40% during the campaign period (Ode to Joy 2) compared to when the first series of Ode to Joy ran. New Panamera climbed to first place in auto vertical platform Autohome’s ranking and had the highest WOM in the segment. We also had 32% more followers on Autohome, the key car portal. We also enjoyed 11M official site visits and 550k+ model page visits. Most importantly, we doubled lead volume generated to drive sales increase, helping fill up Panamera orders.