THE OTHER 23 HOURS
Velaro Motors · Automotive
Challenge
Behaviour change — Urban and suburban millennials aged 25-37 who self-identify as environmentally conscious and culturally progressive, but whose actual car-buying behavior defaults to used gas-powered sedans out of inertia, sticker-shock aversion, and a belief that affordable EVs are either ugly, impractical, or 'not for them yet.'
Insight
Americans spend an average of less than one hour a day driving, yet the entire car industry markets around the driving experience — speed, handling, open roads. For young urban adults who sit in traffic and park in garages, the car's real value lives in the other 23 hours: how it charges overnight like a phone, feeds clean energy back to their apartment building, and sits as a visible signal to neighbors that they're building the future rather than just commuting through it.
Idea
Reframe the EV not as a driving machine but as a '23-hour asset' — something that works hardest when you're not behind the wheel. The campaign line 'The Other 23 Hours' positioned Velaro's affordable compact EV as the first car designed for the life around the drive: charging while you sleep, powering your home during outages, and sitting on your street as proof you chose differently.
Execution
A 60-second anthem spot aired during prime-time programming and streamed pre-roll, shot in a continuous 23-hour time-lapse of a single Velaro parked in a real Brooklyn neighborhood. The car never moves. Instead, the world moves around it — owners sleep, the grid draws power back from the car during a brownout, a child chalks the sidewalk next to it, snow falls and melts. A quiet voiceover narrates what the car is doing in each hour it isn't being driven. On social, owners were invited to share what their Velaro did in its 'other 23 hours' using a UGC toolkit, generating neighborhood-level storytelling. Pop-up 'Parked' installations in six cities let people sit inside a stationary Velaro while screens showed its energy output, cost savings, and grid contribution in real time.