We discovered Volvo labs had been working on a ‘digital key’ technology. But the tech wasn’t meaningful to consumers. Based on the insight that home delivery of online purchases is a headache, we took the basic technology and turned it into something that existing Volvo owners could brag to their friends about; Roam, the world’s first direct-to-car delivery. Operated via a mobile app, Volvo drivers would be able to give a delivery company access to the trunk of their car for a fixed time period (the rest of the car was immobilized). This fitted well with Volvo’s safety positioning (it keeps your parcels safe) and was a great innovation story for our target audience.

Roam Delivery began as a pilot with 1000 (one thousand) connected Volvo cars in Sweden. It operates via the existing Volvo app which talks to the software within a connected Volvo.

Roam is a completely safe system. Drivers are able to give permission to a delivery company to access their car for a specified period of time. The only door that will open is the trunk. The rest of the car is immobilised. The was primarily designed to be a new, tech story to give owners and prospects a good story to talk about and make them feel that Volvo was innovating in the connected car space.

However, when it was announced to the press as a world first at The Mobile World Congress in early 2015 the media response was so enormous that it was fully rolled out in November 2015.

All the hundreds of thousands of connected Volvo cars, old and new, now have Roam as an option.

Our production budget for the development of Roam was just $20K.

With no paid media we reached a huge tech savvy audience of 1.2 billion reach with £24 million of free coverage across 152 markets. Volvo got out of the auto titles and into the tech and news titles such as Wall Street Journal, Europe1, RTL, BBC Click, CNET, Tech Radar Pro and Bloomberg Business Week. It also appeared on The Today Show and as an ‘outstanding Innovation Story’ on CNN.

It was the commercialisation of the world’s first deliver-to-car product.

It has also driven additional revenue streams for Volvo with major companies such as DHL, Argos and Nordpost contacting Volvo to partner with them.

1000 existing Volvo customers with connected cars in Sweden were involved in a pilot to trial Roam. Initially the rest of the Volvo connected car base was contacted via CRM to tell them about Roam. To start the journey for new tech-savvy customers, the strategy was to announce Roam to the press shortly before the Mobile World Congress.

After the decision was made to roll out Roam existing Volvo drivers were told they could use the in-car delivery service via their Volvo app. Additionally, Volvo dealership websites would offer the delivery option on their sites.

Roam Delivery was the world’s first ‘direct to car’ delivery service operated via a mobile app. What started off as a pilot designed to generate buzz in the tech press and pub chat material for the existing Volvo base became a real world, useful service that was rolled out fully to all connected car drivers via the Volvo app.

Volvo wanted to be seen as an exciting technical innovator in key consumer markets. We were engaged to identify compelling stories that we could communicate to existing owners through CRM thus strengthening the relationship and reinforcing their belief they’d bought into a cool badge. Volvo also wanted to appeal to a new audience, a tech savvy crowd, through generating conversation in tech titles and programming.