Volkswagen ID. Cars

Powered by Creators: Volkswagen's Full-Funnel TikTok Campaign Reaches 40M Users

Objectives

As one of the world's most iconic automotive brands, Volkswagen leads the way with the widest BEV (battery electric vehicle) lineup among volume manufacturers.

As part of a push campaign for its fully electric ID. series, Volkswagen set out to build greater awareness by launching a full-funnel campaign on TikTok.

Key objectives of the campaign included driving brand lift, increasing traffic, scaling video content, and reaching a broad audience across nine key European markets.

Solution

Volkswagen launched a full-funnel campaign on TikTok boosted by the platform's premium ad formats, including In-Feed Ads, TopFeed, TopView, and Spark Ads.

At the heart of the campaign was a creator-led content strategy designed to ensure native, high-performing content. To bring this vision to life, Volkswagen partnered with TikTok Creative Exchange to source popular creators from Germany, France, the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, and Ireland.

The collaboration began with a kickoff event in Tuscany, where all creators were invited for an immersive weekend. There, they received an in-depth briefing on the ID. series, selected their ID. car, and spent time exploring and recording content about their experiences.

After the Tuscany event, each creator was given access to an ID vehicle for one week in their home country, allowing them to better experience the car and craft day-in-the-life content, such as visiting a local Christmas market.

This approach allowed creators to highlight specific features of the car in ways that felt genuine and tailored to their lifestyles—strengthening both audience connection and positive perception of the brand.

Volkswagen amplified the creators' content using premium ad formats including TopView, which places videos in the most prominent position of TikTok users' For You feed. Volkswagen also used In-Feed Ads, TopFeed, and Spark Ads as part of its advertising push.

"What made this first EU-9 multi-market campaign from Volkswagen so special was the close and inspiring collaboration – across countries, departments, and partners. Together with Volkswagen, DDB, TikTok, influencers, and both national and international creators, we created something that continues to set benchmarks in the automotive industry to this day." – Kerstin Kornfeld, Digital Director Europe, PHD

Results

The results from Volkswagen's creator-led campaign proved a major success, reaching over 40 million unique users and generating more than 260 million total views—9.2 million of which were organic. The content resonated strongly with audiences, achieving a 98% view-through rate and surpassing both engagement and click-through rate benchmarks across multiple European markets.

Further validating the campaign's effectiveness, a Kantar Cross-Media Measurement study conducted in Germany, France, and the UK confirmed TikTok as one of the most cost-efficient channels for promoting Volkswagen's ID. series. TikTok not only built strong brand equity but also delivered significant incremental reach.

The entertainment platform drove 7% additional reach over TV, was 6x more efficient in expanding reach, and accounted for 36% of the total impact on consideration—well exceeding its share of campaign spend.

These insights reinforce TikTok's key role in optimizing the media mix and maximizing impact at scale in a cost-effective way.