In 2022 Volkswagen announced the ID.Buzz, their first 100% electric van.

The brand’s aim was to make this new bus as much of an icon of creativity as its legendary predecessors - with the iconic hippie bus as the absolute pinnacle of creativity and spirit. But there was one problem: The bus wasn’t available on the planned go-to-market date due to delivery problems with essential parts made in Ukraine.

So, how could we still show the endless creative possibilities of the new bus and engage the public for Volkswagen's newest icon?

As we didn’t have the actual ID.Buzz due to delivery problems of parts, we had to give the audience something engaging to make up for its delayed introduction.

We launched: A.I. Buzz, a social activation that allows people to customize the ID.Buzz before its launch.

We started by creating inspiring visuals of wildly customized ID.Buzzes using the A.I. tool Midjourney. And then aunched these as a series of inspiration on VW’s social channels accompanied by a call to action asking people to share the craziest ID.Buzz ideas in the comments. We promised our fans to render the best entries into stunning shots of their ideal bus. Within no-time VW-fans joined in. With no limits to their imagination.

The audience for this social activation were:

- Prospects interested in the new Volkswagen ID.Buzz via dealers.

- VW-fans following the official Volkswagen Netherlands accounts.

The Volkswagen audience is labeled ‘the aspirational middle class’. And is aged between 30 and 45 years old, earning an average to above-average income.

We put together a group of art directors and designers with the skills to work with Midjourney and teamed up with the social media team from Volkswagen. This team stood standby for two weeks while campaigning.

We started by creating inspiring visuals of wildly customized ID.Buzzes with A.I.

And launched these as a series of inspiration on VW’s social channels accompanied by a call to action to share even wilder ideas in the comments.

Within no-time VW-fans joined in. With no limits to their imagination.

The best entries were hand-picked and rendered to perfection by our team using Midjourney.

Only the VW logo had to be photoshopped on the renders sometimes, as A.I. often distorted it. We’ve created over 500 unique buses together with our fans.

And surprised the creators with a digital (Instagram DM) -and physical poster of their creation.

- Total of 4 promoted posts on Instagram

- Average amount of likes per post: 657

- The best performing post on VW’s Instagram channel ever - with a reach of 1.2 million

- Total reach of all posts: 2 million

- > 26.000 finished full video views

The ID.Buzz campaign led to an increase in Volkswagen’s spontaneous ad awareness at the brand level, a key indicator of brand consideration.

And all pre-orders of the first batch of cars got sold out.