Volkswagen wanted to position the new Polo as a small car that can do much more than one would generally expect from a vehicle in its segment: a compact car with loads of unexpected technology to offer. Under the campaign motto “Who says you can’t?” We were asked to create a visually striking and emotional film to be played on digital. A film with a strong idea, human storytelling and an attention grabbing, iconic look.
We created a beautifully crafted storytelling piece that focuses on the seemingly impossible dream of a young girl: to be a ballet dancing astronaut on Mars. Luckily, when there’s a strong will no dream is too crazy. The film starts with our protagonist flawlessly dancing on the Martian surface. Impressive imagery leaves us wondering if that was a dream or a glimpse into her future. Back on Earth, our protagonists immediately drive towards a Space Camp to realize the girl’s dream.
“Dance on Mars” was a digital-first campaign. Together with our strategic partners at Google, we developed scripts designed for a maximum of user’s attention, especially written and edited organic and TrueView4Action formats, and short format feature films. The thumb-stopping power of these powerful images guaranteed not only unskippable paid media assets, but the film also has one of the highest click-rate amongst all recent Volkswagen social assets. In only two weeks and without any media spend the video got an organic reach of over 700.000 views.
In order to make the dream as real as possible, we needed to create the most accurate and realistic Martian landscape.
After deep research on the soil and geography we worked with a 20x20m set – to give the feeling of the vastness - and filled it with 60 tons of sand, 4 tons of tennis court flour and 1 ton of stones. We used daylight balloons to replicate the typical overcast Martian sky and an artificial sun to create the main light source. A technocrane allowed us to recreate the feeling of slight weightlessness of the Martian atmosphere.
By combining synergically set design and a digitally created background we managed to reach post production levels worthy of Hollywood blockbusters. We used 3D camera tracking and object tracking and established the entire look of the film on two major shots: a close up and a total. This allowed us to create the shots in between and deliver great quality in a relatively short time.
My role: Creative Director
Year: 2021