Insight & Idea:The insight was that environmental information around cars was very technical and hard to grasp for the consumer.The idea was showing how little carbon dioxide was emitted by the Passat Ecofuel by using the most accessible comparison possible – the human breath.The campaign used many mediums – from direct to digital – to show how little the Passat EcoFuel released when put into terms of the human breath. Some examples used included the breathing emissions of a jazz band, the breaths required to read a long text, the breath require to inflate a balloon and and iPhone app that calculated how much your breath corresponded to in terms of emissions from a Passat Ecofuel.

The campaign included a digital application – the Jazz calculator – that recalculated the emissions from travelling a certain route in Sweden with the Passat EcoFuel into the equivalent emissions from a small jazz band, and converted this into a playlist of jazz on the music network Spotify. Long copy advertising about irrelevant subjects (recipes, mushroom biology) that piqued the curiosity of consumers were made to match a certain number of breaths from the consumer, equivalent to the emissions of the Passat EcoFuel. An iPhone app was made, that calculated the CO2 in your breath and matched it to the Passat Ecofuel’s.

And finally, direct mail solutions containing blue balloons were sent to consumers – when inflated, the balloons showed the text “This balloon contains as much CO2 as the emissions from a Passat Ecofuel per kilometre.”)

Volkswagen beat its sales goals for the Passat EcoFuel by 40%, despite a shrinking car market.

The Passat EcoFuel is now Sweden’s most sold eco car.