At the end of 2017 the legendary Volvo Ocean Race returned to Australia for the first time in 11 years. Volvo wanted to generate social media interest in the event by embarking on a creative influencer campaign.

At the same the all-new XC60 vehicle was released in the country, and Volvo recognised a unique opportunity to combine the Ocean Race event with the launch of this exciting high-end car.

As this was the first time the car was to be in Australia, the marketing team at Volvo had a distinct lack of commercial photography and video footage of the vehicle in local landscapes, with all of the advertising content featuring imagery from Scandinavia.

We were hired to bring all 3 aspects together in an intense 7-day social media influencer campaign, with the goal at capturing new images for their future marketing advertisements while also drumming up excitement around the arrival of the yachts in Australia.

The campaign was designed around us ‘racing the boats by land’ in the all-new XC60, at the time one of only 3 in the country. We drove 5000km across Australia, publishing content on our social media channels to coincide with the Ocean Race. With such diverse landscapes it also gave us the opportunity to create stunning marketing shots in iconic Australian backgrounds.

At the end of the campaign we had generated over one million impressions in 7 days and supplied over 50 commercial-quality photos, as well as a huge catalog of video footage for Volvo’s use.

This was an innovative project that managed to solve a number of marketing problems in the one campaign.