Title	SOUNDS FOR DRIVING
Brand	EUROPCAR SWEDEN
Product/Service	RENTAL CARS
Category	B03. CONSUMER SERVICES
PR Agency	WENDERFALCK Stockholm, SWEDEN
Entrant Company	WENDERFALCK Stockholm, SWEDEN

Name	Company	Position
Peter Simonsson	Wenderfalck	Developer
Petter Rudwall	Wenderfalck	Creative
Jens Johnsson	Wenderfalck	Designer
Emma Lundskog	Wenderfalck	Key Account Manager
Nina Brogård	Wenderfalck	Project Manager
Linn Jacobsson	Wenderfalck	Creative Director

The Campaign

The challenge: To increase awareness of Europcars unique rental car offerings to a broad audience, on a market that doesn’t really care about rental cars. The objective: To get people curious about the project, and actual try the unique music experience we created. The strategy: To help Europcar create a truly unique driving experience for all customers, that would make the drivers safer. The insight: People are exposed to different challenging situations when driving, which generate human reactions such as stress, anger, frustration, tiredness etc. The execution: A scientist, specialized in how people are affected by sounds, compiled a scientific study on which sounds that has positive effects on people driving cars. Key-takeaways from the study were given to the famous electronic artist Håkan Lidbo, who produced an entire music album based on the science. One track for every driving situation was produced, e.g. the track “night time driving” helps people stay more alert when driving at night. The music was first implemented in all Europcar’s rental cars, and later released on all major music streaming services, for everyone to use while driving. The outcome: Massive attention from Swedish media, with a total reach of more than 13 million people. The campaign spread to the rest of Europe, resulting in that Europcar Norway wanted to implement the music in their cars. Also, well-renowned media acknowledge the campaign – Adage nominated it as “pick of the day”, Fast Company wrote an extensive article about Sounds For Driving.

The Brief

To help Europcar increase their market share, and at the same time communicate that they offer their customers a truly unique rental car experience. The target audience was primarily modern people, living in urban city areas, which sometimes need a car for various reasons.

Results

The campaign was a huge success and has so far reached more that 13 million people, which is actually more than the Swedish population. We have been invited to talk about the project in Sweden’s biggest TV morning show, a number of radio shows, all of the biggest daily’s have written about the project as well as motor magazines, music magazines, tech magazines and the most important travel industry magazines. Furthermore, the project has also been covered in other markets such as the US, the Netherlands, Norway and Finland - as a creative and inspirational project from Europcar Sweden. Also, Adage named the campaign “Creative pick of the day” and Fast Company wrote an extensive article, which generated massive attention on Twitter. On top of this Europcar Sweden got a request from their Norwegian colleagues asking for the possibility to launch Sounds for Driving in Norway.

Execution

We invited people to be a part of the campaign by documenting the research process on a Tumblr, which created an initial buzz online. This raised a general awareness among people of how music affects the human brain. Next step was for the electronic artist, Håkan Lidbo, to create music based on the science. This was captured and complied to a teaser film, released on YouTube, which generated even more buzz on social media. In April 2014, the week before the big car rental holiday Easter, we released the entire music album by implementing the music in all Europcar’s rental cars. Shortly after, the music was launched on Spotify, iTunes, SoundCloud etc., for people all over the world to use when driving. By using tailor made media pitches targeting specific media we brought the story to the press during the entire project.

The Situation

Europcar Sweden was facing decreasing market shares and at the same time increasing competition. Europcar decided to offer their customers a truly unique rental car experience in order to different themselves from competitors. We helped Europcar to identify this opportunity as well as create numerous speaking opportunities with both national and international media.

The Strategy

In the planning process, we soon realised that car drivers often find themselves in challenging situations. For example, driving late at night often provokes a feeling of tiredness, while driving in rush hours provokes a feeling of stress. When we realised this problem, we focused on finding a solution, and soon discovered that music have the ability to affect people positive in challenging situations. The insight was formed into an idea where a famous electronic artist produced music, based on science from a well-renowned sound scientist, which affects the car driver positively in challenging situations.