How Polestar Launched in Five German Cities with a One-Time Effort

See how the electric performance car brand, Polestar, launched the Polestar 1 for the first time in the German market in a one-time effort, with Cherrydeck.

Polestar is an electric car brand combining driving performance with top technology and great design. The company partially owned by Volvo and Geely, was created with the mission of offering driving pleasure without compromising environmental sustainability.

Launching Polestar 1 for the first time in Germany, Polestar faced many challenges.

Challenges

For their first campaign, the small German team in charge of the launch had to deal with modest brand awareness in Germany, moderate resources, and a lack of creative professionals’ network in the country.

Having a strong design and creative flair, Polestar needed to make sure the campaign was spotless and showcased the product in the right way.

The launch campaign needed to be of high creativity, but also strongly relate with the German consumer and car lover.

The creative approach

Together with Cherrydeck, Polestar developed a creative approach to overcome the mentioned challenges. The outcome being a photography competition that would reach first a targeted creative and design-conscious community, and then the general German population.

The idea was to get one content expert in each of the five biggest German cities — Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, and Düsseldorf — to photograph the Polestar 1 and drive it in their area, while documenting the experience.

The outcome should be increased awareness, extra buzz around the Polestar 1, increased social media following in German areas and, most important, relevant local content in the target market.

How did it work?

The first step was to create the photography competition on Cherrydeck, so that pre-selected creative professionals could explore the concept and apply. The contest reached millions of professionals, creating the first buzz and word-of-mouth effect within the niche.

After a shortlisting process and the selection of the final candidates, Polestar handed over the Polestar 1 to each of the winners in the mentioned German cities. The photographers drove the car for two days, while documenting the experience with photos and short clips.

During the experience, the local population got intrigued by this new futuristic car gliding the roads. Many of them even filming or taking photographs themselves:

Never before have I attracted so many eyes to a single car — from children to adults. Many came to us, asked which car it was, some drove alongside while filming.

Matteo Sant’Unione, winner photographer in Cologne

After the two days were over, the photographers delivered the content to Polestar and arranged the final details.

Main takeaways

In a one-time effort, Polestar was able to obtain dozens of high-quality pictures and videos from the Polestar 1, tailored to the different German cities.

The results were achieved without the need of flying a photographer to several locations, paying additional travel expenses, worrying about accommodation, or waiting long periods to get the campaigns ready.

Polestar was able to adopt a very localised marketing approach in a short period of time and effort. The brand could easily reach German creators who know the target regions best and capture the culture and visual language of those places.

In addition, Polestar gathered a series of different real testimonials from the photographers, who spent two full days exploring the Polestar 1. See them here.

Would you like to achieve similar results with your campaigns? We are happy to discuss ideas — let’s talk!

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