Europcar: Crush Hour

In 2001 Europcar launched Autoliberté, a subscription service providing a simple alternative to owning a car. For a monthly fee, you could have the car you want, anywhere you want, whenever you want. But by 2010 subscriptions had flat-lined. With a budget of only €64,000 the challenge was to come up with an idea that could kick-start subscriptions. This was achieved through a ‘Punked’ style prank that towed unsuspecting people’s cars away and replaced them with crushed cars. Their reactions were then filmed and posted online. The campaign generated more than €1m in earned media and increased subscriptions to Autoliberté by more than 123%