Taiwan is a small and competitive market for cars. Car models sold in Taiwan tend to fit a monochromatic set of consumer preferences. Within Taiwan’s electric car sector, like elsewhere, Tesla has become synonymous with electromobility and dominates the EV market, making it challenging for other automakers to enter the playing field.

Having in recent years broken ground on its decarbonization program, Porsche wants to build up its image in Taiwan as a solid electric car maker. But it faces a conundrum: Taiwanese consumers do not consider a Porsche that makes electric cars as Porsche. Also, they see Taycan Cross Turismo, Porsche's all-electric off-road sports car that is unlike any other car models available in Taiwan, as neither true electric nor Porsche. Most Taiwanese car buyers simply do not know what to make of Turismo.

Our mission was to resolve this perception problem and help Porsche Taiwan sell more Turismo.

We wanted to speak to our audience, many are leaders in Taiwan's technology and creativity industry, within their context, about the parallels between their endeavors and triumphs, and Porsche’s transformative journey that started a new era beginning with Turismo. We wanted to make tribute to these leaders’ relentlessness, perseverance, and creativity as instigators and survivors of countless changes and transformations. We wanted to celebrate their leading the charges as trailblazers on paths often off the beaten road.

We found inspiration in “neng-tzeng,” a Taiwanese Hokkien term used to describe a person who is apt to find ways to adapt and move forward regardless of circumstances. It is what gives strengths to and propels these creative leaders, as well as Taiwan as a country, given the country’s peculiar international status as an unrecognized democracy.

What else is more fitting than a documentary that celebrates this “neng-tzeng,” which is so uniquely Taiwanese?

The fact that Taiwan’s Tesla owners see Tesla as a colloquially “3C product” intrigued us. Even more interesting was 70% of these owners who seek the more humanistic side of owning and driving a car but feel Tesla unable to fulfill such need would consider buying a second car to compensate. Here lies Porsche’s opportunity.

However, these EV owners and creative leaders are not easily swayed and do not care for advertisements. To communicate with them, we must present “neng-tzeng” through a topic of their interest, with someone to whom they are willing to tune in.

That is where Ching-Feng Lin, an environmental conservationist and former host of a popular reality show on local ecotourism and ecological education, came in. We also uncovered a linkage, adaptive transmutation, between “neng-tzeng,” biology, and Porsche with Turismo. We invited Mr. Lin to help us adapt the concept into a documercial and other media.

The two-month campaign encompassed a documercial film, a series of nature photography, a field guide to new species, and various social posts.

The three-minute documercial is an integral part of our collaboration with Lin. It was filmed in the deep forests of Taroko National Park, supplemented with impromptu projection mapping, intentionally unscripted so that Lin had the complete freedom to explore and capture nature’s wonders in their truest, unbounded forms.

The documercial was scored by Lim Giong, a pioneering Taiwanese musician in the Taiwanese experimental electronic music scene. He based the score on the sounds Lin captured while filming.

Before the film’s release, Lin published on his Facebook page a photography series depicting places or trails off the beaten path. Later, a field guide to the rare new species found during the filming was released shortly after the film, echoing Lin’s many years of pursuit of taking conservation education viral.

The campaign marked a new chapter in history for Porsche Taiwan. Two months following the campaign was launched in December 2021, the documercial had been watched 9.5 million times with a view-through rate of 70% and an average view duration of 2’16” (film length 3’18”), while the sales team was delighted by a never-before-seen sales record of two-hundred Taycans during the same period. In particular, in January 2022, Porsche Taycan outsold Tesla for the first time.

For Ching-Feng Lin, the campaign helped boost activities on his Facebook fan page by 180%. Collaboration between Porsche and Ching-Feng Lin has encouraged more national parks, including Yangmingshan National Park, to become accepting of brand collaborations.

Finally, according to a brand survey released in March 2022, opinions about Porsche made significant improvements in areas of innovation (up by 11%), sustainability (up by 10%), and social acceptance (up by 12%, overtaking Tesla).