In 2009, VW Sweden faced the challenge of driving interest and sales for VW eco cars and its BlueMotionTechnologies program – on a market where Volvo and Toyota had the clear advantage, where VW’s eco cars weren’t even ranked in the top 10, and Swedes saw eco cars as necessary evil and a downtrade in term of driving pleasure.DDB Stockholm was tasked to try to change these perceptions, using digital channels and a minimal budget, as a kind of small-scale marketing experiment.

Our insight was that people think being environmentally friendly cars are sensible but boring. And we realized that we had the opportunit to show people that VW had make it easier to choose an eco car by making them more fun. Our solution wasn’t a campaign, but a theory. A theory of human behavior that mirrored VW’s design thinking -The Fun Theory. Simply stated, that the easiest way to change human behaviour for the better is by using fun as motivation.

We then set out to test this theory through fun, engaging and VW-branded behavioral experiments that could be spread online. And that’s how a local campaign that became a global phenomenon.In 2009 we launched the theory through three behavioral experiements that were spread as viral videos – The Piano Stairs, The World’s Deepest Bin and the Bottle Bank arcade – and a competition, the Fun Theory award. The result was that over 23 million people saw the viral videos; that the Fun Theory became the most viral campaign in the world at the time; that we increases traffic to VWs digital touchpoints by 300%, increased VW’s image parameters of “fun to drive” and “environmentally friendly” by 20-30% and that we beat VW’s local sales projections by 60% (1500 eco cars).In 2010 we produced the winning idea from the competition, the Speed Camera Lottery, and spread it as a viral video to sustain interest in the Fun Theory. The result was both national and international media coverage and a continued growth in market share.And today,Volkswagen is Sweden’s largest green car brand, with 17,2% of the environmental car market.By using a simple but profound human insight – that people are more likely to do something good when it’s fun-and the power of digital media, we had created an idea that inspired people all across the world and created substantial business value for Volkswagen Sweden