Enter Sandbox
- Brand
- Audi
- Year
- 2017
- Objective
- Product Launch
- Industry
- Automotive
- Mechanic
- Simulation & Strategy
- Platform
- Installation
- Agency
- POL
- With
- Monks
Objective
Audi Norway needed to launch the new Q5 and make its quattro all-wheel drive tangible rather than described, turning a routine dealership visit into an experience people would seek out, film, and share — and one that could travel to showrooms across the country rather than sit in a single flagship location.
Solution
Visitors step up to a sandbox holding about 400kg of sand and, using ordinary kids' shovels and buckets, sculpt their own course by hand — hills, jumps, bends, dips. A depth-sensing camera overhead reads the terrain and turns it into a matching 3D track in real time. The visitor then climbs into an actual Audi Q5 (or a simulator rig built from real Audi parts), puts on a VR headset, and drives the exact course they just built, with the wheel, seat, and surround sound reacting as if they were really on it. The session ends when they pull off the headset, track built and driven in a single visit.
Results
Audi dealers saw a 57% jump in visitor numbers on the days the sandbox was in-store, and the Q5 went on to become Norway's best-selling model. The campaign's video content passed 25 million social media views; a single Deutsche Welle share alone drove over 4 million views and roughly 50,000 shares within a month, plus close to 50,000 more shares from personal Facebook profiles. After its Norwegian tour, the installation moved to Audi's museum in Ingolstadt, where it continues to draw thousands of visitors a month.
- 1
A visitor at an Audi dealership or event approaches a transportable sandbox rig holding roughly 400kg of sand, set beside an Audi Q5 or a driving rig built from real Audi parts. They are handed a plastic toy shovel and bucket.
- 2
The player sculpts a custom track by hand in the sand — piling hills and dunes, shaping jumps, carving turns and ruts — freely deciding the course's layout.
- 3
Digging all the way to the bottom of the box creates a deep mud pit or body of water at that spot in the eventual virtual course, letting the player deliberately add an obstacle to test the car's grip in mud.
- 4
A depth camera scans the finished sand relief in real time, firing infrared pulses to capture over 200,000 height points and instantly rebuilding the sandbox as a matching 3D virtual landscape.
- 5
The player then takes a seat in the Audi Q5's cockpit or the parts-built driving rig and puts on an Oculus Rift headset, finding themselves behind the wheel of a Q5 inside the very landscape they just sculpted.
- 6
During the drive, the player steers and works the pedals while the wheel returns force feedback matched to the terrain, the seat shifts to convey bumps and jumps, and 3D-audio engine sound recorded from a real Q5 shifts with head movement and the car's position on track.
- 7
The player drives their hand-built course end to end — over dunes, jumps, and any dug-out pits — feeling the car handle the terrain as a demonstration of quattro all-wheel drive; afterward the headset comes off and the sand can be reshaped into a new track for another run.
