The launch of the all-new Volvo S60 marked a turning point for the Swedish car brand. With harsh insight telling Volvo that safety alone didn’t sell enough cars, Volvo was embarking on a long term repositioning journey. Spearheaded by the new performance S60, aimed at a younger, trendier and more affluent audience. As part of a global ‘Naughty S60’ campaign, Volvo planned to stage 5 exclusive launch parties across Europe. Our brief was to use these events to create a story that would later spread beyond those that attended the parties. Rather aiming at the world of car enthusiasts, our plan was to turn the parties into a campaign that would reach Volvo’s new target audience. And in the process prove to them that Volvo really does have a naughty side.

Our idea was to use the S60 launch parties as a disguise, for a Pan-European social experiment to discover which European city was the naughtiest. Working with a Social Anthropologist, a series of experiments were devised and hidden at the parties to test for naughty behaviour. Would guests succumb and reveal their naughty side? We were eager to find out.Prior to the parties we staged an Augmented Reality hunt around each city. In collaboration with LAYAR and distributed via lifestyle blogs, anyone naughty enough to complete the hunt gained a place on the exclusive guest list. Next, during the events we watched. Over 5 weeks, in 5 countries, 3062 subjects unknowingly took part in the experiments. Finally, after the last party, the data could be analyzed and the truth behind Subject60 revealed. Paris was crowned ‘The Naughty Capital Of Europe’.

During the recruitment phase the blog postings and AR hunt generated an average reach of 150,000 urbanites in each of the 5 cities.

After the events the online film summary reached over 1.5 million views and appeared on over 1,000 sites. 40,000 viewers clicked through to the Volvo website for more information.

The campaign successfully introduced the 'Naughty' Volvo to a completely new audience in a credible way. It proved to be the brand reappraising jump-start that Volvo was aiming for.