Volvo stands for safety. But safety is mostly associated with dull, boring and careful. Words also reflecting the opinion about Volvo from a young and trendy audience. How do we turn this around and make safety and Volvo somewhat more sexy and trendy.

To promote the Volvo XC60’s automatic braking system, we wanted to reach the most influential Belgian people directly on Twitter. Simply by following them on Twitter. Everyone we start to follow receives a notification that they have a new follower. And it’s well known that when you have a new follower, you want to know a little bit more about them.

On the Twitter profile of the Volvo XC60 you can read the following message:

“Hi, now I’m following you. But don’t you worry, I’m equipped with an automatic breaking system.”

When clicking on the link, people arrived on a webpage with detailed information about the automatic braking system.

With no budget at all, we targeted 2.000 of the most influential people (in Belgium) on Twitter, and by extension reached nearly 120,000 people. We raised the awareness of Volvo as a pro-active safety brand. Within a target that is very receptive for technology innovations. We also raised traffic to the website with a click-through rate of 8%. And a raise of 19% in test drives.

• Play with the double sense of ‘following/follow’ and make the link with the safety feature that prevents you from crashing into the car before you.

• Many other car manufacturers have models equipped with automatic braking systems but because of its safety heritage only Volvo can pull of this kind of communication in a credible way.