Creative Director’s Choice: Optimist Inc’s Charley Lewis on Veloretti’s ‘Car-2-Bike’ campaign
Creative Director’s Choice gives creative directors a chance to highlight the best works around and to spotlight campaigns that are making a difference.
Veloretti's Car-2-Bike initiative
This week, Charley Lewis, vice-president, executive creative director at brand experience agency Optimist Inc, talks about bike manufacturer Veloretti’s ‘Car-2-Bike’ promo campaign.
With young people around the world walking out of school and work on 20 September, climate change finally took a top spot in the news. Key decision makers around the globe are being forced to address the topic, if only to deflect. Over the past few years, many public officials have committed to fairly drastic changes to address the increasingly detrimental issue. Despite all their commitments, no country has actually passed a law prohibiting anything meaningful.
When I moved to Amsterdam, I immediately felt at home. Not because of the grey skies and brown food, but because of the primary mode of transportation: the bicycle. As an avid cyclist and daily bicycle commuter, it has always been my preference to cycle. In Amsterdam bikes are everywhere, helping define life in this city and their prevalence makes it easier for Amsterdam to transition to a cleaner future.
I’ve recently been wondering how some of Amsterdam’s commuter habits could be translated into other urban centers. One simple, yet effective creative approach that I came across was Veloretti’s 'Car-2-Bike' campaign from this past year. In the lead up to European Mobility Week, Veloretti, an Amsterdam based bicycle manufacturer, saw an opportunity to make a direct impact in Paris, where air pollution harms thousands of citizens every year.
On Paris’ ‘Car-Free Day’, Veloretti turned 5m license plate numbers into 5m promo codes for discounts on premium commuter bicycles. Utilizing data from the French license plate database, they developed a script that verified each code and analyzed specific data about the registered vehicle. Once analyzed, the team was able to estimate each vehicle’s CO2 emissions and scale the discount accordingly. The more pollution each vehicle produced, the lower the bicycle price.
Along with the sales generated for Veloretti (2000% sales increase in Paris alone), the campaign went viral and sparked conversations across social platforms about the role of the car in modern urban cultures. Even Paris’ mayor joined the conversation on social media.
Campaigns like this have the potential to effect positive change and help consumers take matters into their own hands.
Charley Lewis is vice-president, executive creative director at brand experience agency Optimist Inc.
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