Young city dwellers are the future of the Porsche brand. While many currently do not own a car at all, they would like to own a Porsche one day. But cost and availability are very high barriers to entry, and most Porsche dealerships are miles away. With the oldest new owners in the car industry, we desperately needed a way to bring more young people into the brand earlier. Add the fact that young city dwellers don’t feel an immediate need for a sports car with the performance capabilities of a Porsche, and an extremely limited promotional fleet (just 1), we needed to come up with a way for young people to experience the brand, without having to get behind the wheel.

Knowing that our target admires the Porsche design aesthetic as much if not more than its performance capabilities, we looked at the brand’s variety of bold, unique colors. It quickly occurred to us that many of them sounded delicious. Mint Green, Frozen Berry, Lime Gold Metallic, Macadamia Metallic, and Strawberry Red. While we couldn’t offer crowds of people test drives, we could give them a literal taste of the brand’s design heritage by turning these colors into ice cream flavors, and a Porsche 911 into an Ice Cream truck adorned with a giant Ice Cream bar. This naturally lent itself to an ice cream party held in a trendy Chicago neighborhood. Everything from the flavors, to the delivery, to the party itself was documented and shared on social media drafting off National Ice Cream Day, and leading to additional Porsche Ice Cream parties across the country.

Instead of focusing on the performance aspects common among sports car brands, get young people in urban centers more interested in the Porsche by highlighting the car company’s heritage as a design icon.

With the Porsche promotional fleet at our disposal limited to just one car, and a challenge to let young city dwellers experience the brand, we set to work how we could make the most of our limited use of a fleet vehicle. Fortunately, that vehicle was a Porsche 911. An eye-catching sports car any time of year, we did the one thing guaranteed to turn heads on a hot summer day. We made it an ice cream truck. Then all we needed was the ice cream. Partnering with a gourmet ice cream shop Pretty Cool, real Porsche colors Mint Green, Frozen Berry, Lime Gold Metallic, Macadamia Metallic, and Strawberry Red became real ice cream bars delivered to young people throughout Chicago on National Ice Cream Day, culminating at an event in front of our ice cream partner’s retail location in the trendy Logan Square neighborhood.

1.4B+ Total impressions across social and media

19K+ Total social engagements

190 Media mentions in earned media

91% Positive sentiment