Polestar Australian Market Launch

Polestar is a design-focused electric performance car brand unlike any other, innovating to drive progress and a better future — one that is both sustainable and beautiful by design. Harnessing refined performance and cutting-edge technology, Polestar is determined to improve the society we live in by accelerating the change to a fully electric, climate-neutral future.

The maturity of the automotive industry has become a barrier to innovation, and over time, car launches have started to all look the same, feel the same, be the same. So when it came to launching the Polestar brand in Australia, we needed to challenge the status quo, and did so without a single vehicle in sight.

In designing a multi-sensory program for Polestar encompassing talent and technology at A Semi Permanent Hotel presented by Highsnobiety, we communicated the brand’s sustainability and design credentials to Semi Permanent and Highsnobiety’s shared audience of cultural pioneers: tastemakers who don’t just buy in to products, but invest in philosophies and proliferate engaging ideas down to their peers and friends.

The omni-channel experience design meant we engaged audiences both physically — at the hotel event in Sydney, Australia — and digitally through Highsnobiety’s dedicated micro-site.

We brought Polestar’s core sustainability and tech narrative to life through curated live conversations with some of Australia’s leading creatives, including fashion designer turned eco-entrepreneur and Sea Forest founder, Sam Elsom, who discussed his mission to reduce methane emissions through the cultivation of seaweed for livestock feed, and a deep-dive in to the world of NFTs with Foundation Labs founder, Matt Vernon, and artist David Porte Beckefeld, who together unpacked the fast-evolving landscape of digital art and the new creative economy.

We leveraged Polestar’s global collaboration with musician, futurist and robotics engineer Moritz Simon Geitz — who has deconstructed components of the Polestar 2 car to create a music device that “extracts the electric soul” of the Polestar 2 car — to transform a guest room in to an immersive light and sound experience powered by Harmon Kardon speakers. And for those not physically in the room, we hosted a digital sound mixing experience on Highsnobiety.com, inviting audiences to play Moritz’s robots and compose their own Polestar-inspired track.

As Polestar is the first car brand to explicitly define credible net-zero targets, spearheading a movement for transparency throughout the automotive industry, we brought the brand’s Lifecycle Assessment Report (LCA) to life, exploring Polestar’s sustainability credentials through a design-led AR experience and tactile material installation. Architectural sculptures of aluminium, copper, flax (Bcomp) and recycled fishing nets (which then become Nylon 6) were on display, triggering a digital Augmented Reality experience powered by Apple’s iPad Pro Liquid Retina XDR display, bringing the materials to life on-screen. To accompany, Highsnobiety readers were taken on a visual journey through the LCA report, translating scientific data in to consumable graphics and impact statements that unpacked what it all means.