Our campaign directly communicated the sustainable benefits of hydrogen cars to consumers by addressing the chronic dilemma of garbage trucks that everyone agrees with through a tangible medium: the Hydrogen Garbage Truck. The biggest problem was that due to the B2B-oriented nature of hydrogen cars the public was unfamiliar with hydrogen cars, but the Hydrogen Garbage Truck campaign gained public consensus on the advantages of sustainable hydrogen cars and strongly appeal to the consumers their benefits.

The hydrogen car is the most sustainable zero-emission vehicle on Earth. However, because most hydrogen cars are B2B commercial vehicles, consumers are unable to access hydrogen cars in their everyday lives. Naturally, consumers could not sympathize with the necessity and benefits of hydrogen cars. To address this problem, Hyundai Motor Group, the No.1 global hydrogen market shareholder, executed a special campaign where consumers can experience hydrogen cars daily.

The Hyundai Motor Group is the world’s No.1 hydrogen car markets shareholder. However, hydrogen car sales accounted for only 0.3% of electric cars last year. Most of the hydrogen cars such as the heavy-duty trucks are for B2B purposes. Therefore, hydrogen cars are inaccessible and consumers are unable to experience the benefits or need for hydrogen cars in everyday life. For these reasons, most consumers' opinions on hydrogen cars were skeptical, which led to low sales.

The Hyundai Motor Group wished to gain public consensus on the advantages of hydrogen cars. The most effective way to convey the benefits of hydrogen cars, which are mostly commercial vehicles, is to let consumers experience themselves. Therefore, we devised a special strategy: to allow consumers to encounter hydrogen cars every day. How? With garbage trucks!

But why garbage trucks? 90% of the garbage trucks use internal combustion engines, which threaten both the environment and sanitation workers’ health with gas, noise, and heat emission. If this problem is solved with hydrogen cars, wouldn’t their sustainable advantages be highlighted?

Consumers encounter loud, dirty, and dangerous garbage trucks daily. By resolving this problem with hydrogen technology, the Hydrogen Garbage Truck campaign’s strategy was to allow consumers to visibly experience the benefits of hydrogen cars and sincerely deliver Hyundai Motor Group’s message: hydrogen car technology can improve human lives.

We encounter garbage trucks daily. The problem is that the smoke, heat, and noise of garbage trucks are severely damaging the health of sanitation workers. In particular, the exhaust was the cause of the high risk of lung cancer for sanitation workers.

Hydrogen Garbage Truck is zero-emission with minimal noise and heat emission, dramatically improving the work environment for sanitation workers. Particularly, the portable sink using water, the only by-product of the hydrogen car was the most necessary function for sanitation workers, who were unable to clean themselves during work.

By solving the chronic problem of garbage trucks with hydrogen car technology, consumers could experience the advantages of hydrogen cars in their daily lives. As a result, our campaign showed how effective hydrogen technology can be when it is used where it is most needed and how eco-friendly hydrogen technology can make our lives better.

After the campaign, positive responses about Hyundai Motor Groups’ hydrogen cars have increased by 40%. The campaign film, which depicted the entire process of manufacturing Hydrogen Garbage Car, was watched by 80% of the Korean population(43M Views). It’s noteworthy that the majority of viewers were MZ generations with a high interest in sustainable vehicles.

The Hydrogen Garbage Truck campaign also had an impact on hydrogen car sales. After the campaign execution, Hyundai Motor Group’s hydrogen car NEXO’s sales increased by 29.3%.

After receiving stellar reviews, the Korean government announced plans to replace all garbage trucks sequentially with Hydrogen Garbage Trucks in the future. This is one of the biggest achievements of our campaign.

As a portable sink received great reviews from sanitation workers, Hyundai Motor Group announced to mass-produce the function as an option for hydrogen trucks. (Announcement in March 2022)