To promote car2go’s new Mercedes Benz fleet we used the picture galleries of Google Maps as a guerrilla promo & activation platform for the very first time to turn a whole city into a virtual showroom.

We captured Google Maps as an involuntary partner in crime. Because this is where we find consumers moving around and looking for orientation in the city jungle. In September 2016 we turned Google Maps into a virtual showroom to advertise the new fleet. And its size was 800 square kilometers: all of Berlin!

We took about 4000 photos that showed the current car2go vehicles placed in front of the capital’s most googled locations, i.e. Berlin’s most popular venues of day- and nightlife as well as all the important tourist attractions.

Next step: Uploading the pictures to Germany’s location finder no.1: Google Maps.

This way we managed to hijack Google Maps overnight. And turned Berlin

into 800 square kilometres virtual car showroom.

With this focused utilization of an everyday online application used by the modern urban target group, Germany’s carsharing service no.1 skyrocketed with 300 clicks on average per photo within the first 48 hours, in total 1.2 Million, to the position of carsharing provider with the most views.

Whoever now was out and about in Berlin and used Google Maps to search for locations, there was no way to avoid car2go.

Without a single cent of media budget we transformed the picture galleries of google maps into a virtual car showroom with a size of 800 square kilometres: all of Berlin.

We took about 400 photos. Each single picture achieved 300 clicks on average within the first 48 hours (in total 1.2 Million). By the end of 2016 every image reached about 1.1 Million views which means an enourmos activation value.

Germany’s carsharing service No.1 skyrocketed to the position of carsharing provider with the most views.

We raised the popularity of the new car2go Mercedes Benz fleet and a achieved massive increase in bookings and registrations.

And, to keep it running: the disruptive promotion stunt got extended into a customer driven loyalty program, that rewarded pictures uploaded by customers themselves by extra minutes in return.