Volkswagen has been the leading car brand in the Dutch automotive market for the past decades. With their broad range of different models, Volkswagen can be seen as a true family car brand.

Instead of Volkswagen’s traditional brand campaigns, the brand chose a more business-oriented campaign in 2018. To maintain scores on important brand values (and have an impact outside of the mid-funnel), Volkswagen asked us to create an idea that drives brand sympathy among families, in an innovative way.

Most of us can relate to the image of kids looking outside the window letting their mind wander into imaginary worlds as they travel along the road. But the back seat of most family cars today looks quite different: children sucked into screens, disconnected from what surrounds them. Research shows that 7 out of 10 kids are handed screens during long rides.

That is why we created Road Tales, a location-based audiobook app that brings highways to life. Parents can play the interactive stories through the car’s sound system and then put the phone away. The app contains multiple dynamic story chapters that are triggered by objects along the journey, like windmills, lakes and bridges. Through a mix of good old storytelling and the game ‘I spy with my little eye’, we turned screen time into family time, and thus quality time.

Data based creative requires a multi disciplinary effort. In the case of Snelweg Sprookjes our

team of technologists, user experience designers, creatives and children book writers worked

together to create a storytelling model that was able to tell interactive stories based on objects

in random order.

First we identitfied all the available objects that we could get data on. Once we had this

overview we looked for a holistic approach that allowed creatives to create stories based on

data. This resulted in a story engine that was able to reorder the storyline in real-time as the

car would encounter different objects on it’s journey.

To populate the engine with the necessary data points we applied 3 methods:

1) We sourced publically available data sources to create a base of objects

2) We applied a computer vision alghorithm to google streetview screenshots

3) We manually scanned the highways to validate and add extra custom data points

Once the structure and engine were established, we wrote the first story ourselves so that we

had a clear template to work with when we briefed children book writers who had no prior

experience in interactive story writing.

The biggest challenge in executing this idea was to find a scalable solution that allows users to start a story at any point on the highway. Instead of creating fixed linear stories on limited segments, we created a story engine that detects objects along the road. To populate the engine with objects we used a combination of existing data points and manual research on Google Streetview, which was partly supported by a tensorflow computer vision engine. This process included scanning the entire Dutch highway system (5000 kilometers) to identify thousands of bridges, windmills, lakes and other things along the road.

We partnered with the CPNB (Dutch books authority) and worked with several illustrators and award-winning children’s book writers to make the experience feel both innovative ánd handcrafted. This way, we made sure the app felt more like magic than just a smart tech system: qualitative children's books, rather than just an ad campaign. And that's crucial if you want to grab kids’ undivided attention.

The Road Tales app can be downloaded from both the App Store and the Google Play store. Our campaign was aimed at creating awareness for Road Tales and encouraging parents to download the app. It consists of a social campaign, influencer strategy, and online video. Moreover, word of mouth amongst befriended parents (based on their positive experiences with the app) proved to be a strong and relevant driver for the campaign.

To make the story stick, we made car-stickers of the characters that were given to schools and were handed out at dealerships. Because in the end, there’s no better way to keep the stories alive than stickering ‘your’ window with your favorite characters.

At this point in time the campaign has only been released for a month. The first results look very promising:

The Road Tales app reached the #1 position in the app store’s book category within 3 days.

Was picked up by bigger media like Linda, Nu.nl and Het Parool and international advertising blogs including The Drum, Campaign, AdAge and Contagious.

Over 30,000 tales have already been told on Dutch roads, with a total of 450,000+ minutes of highway storytime. Time that otherwise would be spent behind screens.

However, the biggest compliment we got is parents asking for more stories, as with Road Tales they don’t feel the need to hand out screens for every ride anymore: screentime became storytime, and thus quality time. We are therefore researching the possibilities of a sequel, like adding new stories to the app, or even expanding the app to other countries.