7.6 Seconds With Passat GTE

Objective

Volkswagen aimed to engage consumers with the Passat GTE by highlighting its key performance specification—0-100 km/h acceleration in 7.6 seconds—through an interactive gaming experience. The campaign accompanied the Passat GTE's launch in Norway, where the brand wanted to spotlight the new GTE plug-in hybrid powertrain within a growing hybrid market. The campaign used gamification to create a memorable, shareable way to communicate the vehicle's performance while offering the car itself as a prize incentive.

Solution

The campaign featured an interactive timing game where players attempted to stop a countdown timer at precisely 7.6 seconds, matching the Passat GTE's actual acceleration benchmark. Users engaged with the game while learning about the vehicle's capabilities, with the opportunity to win a Passat GTE as the grand prize; sharing the campaign and booking a test drive at a dealership increased a player's chances of winning. The experience was built using WebGL and video integration, with fullscreen design and mobile optimization to ensure broad accessibility across devices, and was created by Norwegian agency TRY (development by Magnus Bergman; 3D production by Frode Ekeberg, Christian Lundvall and Kim Holm; sound by Kim Jensen). In Norway the core mechanic was extended into paid media: TV2 and Dagbladet, two of the country's largest web TV publishers, ran the competition inside a purpose-built interactive video-player format co-developed with Madington, where a "GTE button" let viewers fast-forward through the commercial in exactly 7.6 seconds.

Results

The campaign received an Honorable Mention award at Awwwards on May 4, 2016, and won the Website of the Day award from CSS Design Awards on May 6, 2016. Community ratings were consistently strong, with the highest score of 10.0 and multiple scores of 9.0 from reviewers.