Westfield London, more used to crowds of shoppers thronging its halls, was turned into a racetrack for a content marketing drive featuring DS Automobiles’ new electric car.
A film released by DS Automobiles shows Formula E racing driver Sam Bird taking the brand’s concept car for a secret after-hours spin inside Westfield London, marking the UK debut of the high-performance DS E-TENSE vehicle.
The behind-closed-doors footage shows Bird, a DS Virgin Racing driver and the third-highest all-time Formula E points scorer, behind the wheel of the all-electric vehicle. As the camera pans away it becomes clear he is driving indoors, past many of the high-street and high-end stores that call the major retail destination in White City home.
Westfield Brand Ventures, a division of the shopping centre operators which offers tailored propositions to brands to deliver consumer engagement throughout the retail journey, worked with DS Automobiles on arranging special permission for Bird to drive the DS E-TENSE indoors after closing time.
The footage was recorded at night inside Westfield London, soon to become Europe’s largest shopping centre when a £600 million Phase 2 expansion opens in March 2018.
Paul Buttigieg, Westfield’s Director of Operations, says: “We like to go the extra mile for our partners to help them create innovative content to drive awareness and sales. Giving a leading racing driver the green light to take a spin inside one of our centres was a real first but having built such a positive relationship with DS Automobiles over the past few years we wanted to help them create a standout moment to mark the UK debut of the DS E-TENSE, and the soon-to-be-launched DS 7 CROSSBACK.”
DS Automobiles has partnered with Westfield London since 2015, opening its flagship DS Urban Store in 2016. The digitally-enabled boutique concept invites visitors to explore the lifestyle of the Parisian-born brand at one of London’s premium shopping destinations.
Mark Blundell, UK Marketing Director at DS Automobiles, adds: “The avant-garde spirit of design present in every DS car aligns perfectly with some of the world’s most luxurious names in fashion located in Westfield London. This remains the perfect location for our brand and Westfield continues to help us find new and creative ways to engage an extremely high footfall audience.”
First unveiled at the 2016 Geneva Motor Show, the DS E-TENSE concept car perfectly blends state-of-the-art technology and avant-garde design with unique styling. Fittingly, the model Bird can be seen driving in the film is an exclusive metallic ametrine green; the zero-emissions DS E-TENSE delivers propulsion that is clean, silent, efficient and powerful.
Westfield’s Brand Ventures works collaboratively with partners to maximise revenue and deliver an enhanced customer experience across its portfolio of physical and digital assets within Westfield London and Westfield Stratford City.
DS Automobiles is a luxury car marque which is part of Groupe PSA, which owns the Peugeot, Citroën, DS Automobiles, Opel and Vauxhall Motors brands. DS aims to revive the tradition of premium vehicles in the French automotive industry, perpetuating the values of innovation and distinction inherited from the first DS, launched in 1955. DS also supports year-round artistic and cultural activities based around fashion, design, art and gastronomy.
