London 2012 Watch: VW Powers Cars With Cheers vs Europcar Caraoke

Posted by Sheila Shayon on July 30, 2012 02:19 PM

Volkswagen may not be the official auto sponsor of the London 2012 Olympic Games — that title goes to BMW, which has been providing a sustainable fleet to VIPs and athletes — VW is sponsoring the Dutch Olympics team. Getting in the spirit of the games, VW's marketing team and agency in the Netherlands came up with a cheer-based campaign in the lead-up to the Games that got Dutch fans literally cheering.

As TrendHunter notes, "Up! Holland Up!" gave Dutch fans "the opportunity to win tickets to the London Olympic Games by making a Volkswagen car go as fast as possible—only, instead of driving it the normal way, the participants had to scream and cheer as loud as possible to get the car to move."

OrangeMotion Technologies created a scream-powered vehicle for VW by removing the car’s foot pedals, and then reconfiguring the “engine CPU to translate sound decibels into RPM’s to power the car,” according to the Digital Buzz blog.

The louder the noise, the more powerful the car will be and the faster it will go. Participants competed with one another to get the car to move 100 meters in the fastest time, with the winner receiving tickets to the Olympics. (Check out their efforts on the VW Netherlands YouTube channel.)

Another auto brand is enouraging in-car noisemaking this Olympics. Britain's Europcar car rental agency is bringing karaoke in-car in a punning new campaign, Caraoke, a competition to find the best in-car karaoke singer in the UK.

Participants record themselves singing one of ten karaoke songs while in the car, upload the video on Facebook, and fans vote for their favorites and win prizes including Amazon vouchers, spa days, Samsung Galaxy Tablets and one Fiat 500.

“From car hire to social media strategies and campaigns our objective is to keep Europcar at the forefront of the marketplace by implementing innovative techniques that drive the business forward and change consumer expectations of car hire,” commented Europcar’s UK Group Managing Director Ken McCall.

Shopping centers across the UK are hosting two road shows promoting the competition, which runs through August 11. See more in the promo below.