The car brand sector is in a rapid transition. And the climate objectives contribute massively to this transition meaning the industry needs to be climate neutral by 2050. Volvo is more ambitious and wants to be climate neutral by 2040. Volvo claims they’re part of the climate problem and their focus is to be part of the solution. One of the first major steps towards sustainability is moving all car sales online by 2035. Experts like Capgemini acknowledge that a complete online sales funnel has a massive sustainable impact and Volvo wants to avoid people getting into their car to go to a showroom to check out another car.

The problem however is that people want to see a car in real before buying it. The biggest challenge was to link physical attraction to a digital sales funnel. This asked for a completely new approach to how we buy cars.

Customer experience research learns that people still want to see a car in real before buying it. So, our customer journey starts off in the Belgian streets. People get attracted by a car and all its configured details just as it drives by, creating an instant appeal. Prospects want an instant offer of the exact car they had spotted in the streets, without losing time by guessing and searching the configuration of the car that struck their heart.

Volvo introduced: Volvo Street Configurator.

Making every Volvo in the streets an opportunity to sell. Did you spot the perfect Volvo? Take a photo of the car and get the exact configuration of the desired Volvo you just ran into. You don’t have to go to the showroom anymore as the street is your showroom.

With this idea, we were targeting a broad interested audience that was no car connoisseurs that master all details of the Volvo cars. We wanted to attract an audience from 24 to 55 years old, that would be genuinely triggered by our campaign and instantly uses the tool to discover their future Volvo.

But the process of buying a car online faces 2 barriers; first, it’s quite a hassle to complete a car configuration online if you’re not an expert. Secondly, people in search of a new car want to see the car in real.

So, Volvo rethought its customer journey and its approach to displaying and selling cars profoundly.

The street needed to be our showroom and technology would be the cornerstone in this conversion, linking physical attraction in the streets with digital commitment and digitalizing the car buying journey in line with Volvo’s sustainability ambition.

Volvo Street configurator is the very first mobile web app that recognizes the configuration of any Volvo on the street. To get people to use the app, we invited everyone to look around them for inspiration with the claim “The street is our showroom”. A national outdoor campaign generating traffic to the app (with an outdoor QR scan possibility) and a SoMe campaign showed Volvo's shot in Belgian streets by three street photographers, again linking to the app. All used media was targeting prospects while they were on the go and most likely to see a Volvo they like. Next to stimulating people to spot Volvo’s, we also lowered the threshold by spreading a tutorial video and using influencers to show how easy it is to find the car you like. From love at first sight to a pre-filled configuration, all in less than 60 seconds.

Turning the street into a showroom turned out to be a successful move by Volvo, as a brand and as a business.

Press lauded this bold move of Volvo as the future way of buying cars. Starting from physical attraction in the street, Volvo generated 10% more configurations than last year, 56% more test drives, and 29% more offer requests. The 175% higher conversion rate resulted in 4492 cars sold in January, making it the best month ever in the history of Volvo Belgium. Starting from a pre-filled configuration, the app generated +450% more completions of configurations compared to desktop configurations.

The tool was developed for Belux, but given the great results, Germany, Austria, the UK, and the US are currently adapting the tool for their country.