German Millennials are hooked on the TV show Dragon’s Den where entrepreneurs pitch their business in under two minutes to persuade backers to invest.

It has a unique appeal for Germans, because when it comes to being succinct (which the show relies on) Germans are at the back of the pack, and they know it.

Germans are to short, sharp storytelling what the Jamaican bobsled team was to the ‘88 Winter Olympics. They get it, but they just can’t seem to DO it.

We designed an elevator pitch situation, a playful nod to the staple business myth of selling an idea in an extremely confined space and time. It challenged students to abandon the national tendency toward lengthy explanations to sell a product innovation in under two minutes.

Evonik could use entertaining elements of the “elevator pitch” and exciting digital experiences to change its image and capture the unicorns.

We sent the custom-built Evonik Elevator on a tour to prestigious German universities and posed students a real challenge: all they saw was a large metal box with HD screens inside recreating the interior and illusion of an actual elevator ride. Students stepped inside and were handed an Evonik product idea with a fake name that they’d never seen before.

The participant had exactly 100 seconds to sell it inside the elevator while getting hints and tips over the main touchscreen. At the same time, their pitch was uploaded to a microsite other students could access.

This is where the students “riding” the elevator became brand-ambassadors by activating their communities. Every vote for their Personal Elevator Pitch on the microsite got the participants closer to winning big prizes like trips to the tech-stronghold Evonik Singapore.

The Elevator Pitch took Evonik to the top. A little buzz went a long, long way. We squeezed 361 students from 6 cities into our elevator- okay, not all at the same time - and, crucially, each rider activated their community. With 1.5 million impressions in social media for the campaign, the voting mechanism alone generated 15% of earned media, leading to 3.5K interactions with our microsite.

Here’s the proof that a fun idea can have a huge impact: unaided awareness jumped from 8% to 12% between December 2015 and December 2016; general awareness grew from 65% to 71% over the same period.

Students saw Evonik as innovative (59%) and modern (63%). Interest in working for Evonik soared to 33% for those exposed to the elevator pitch – three times higher than non-exposed.