How Volkswagen Turned Norway's E6 Into a Fuel Efficiency Roulette Board
Volkswagen's 'Roulette' campaign, created by Oslo-based agency TRY/Apt and launched in Norway in August 2011, transformed the E6 highway into an interactive roulette board using Google Maps and Street View, inviting the Norwegian public to bet on exactly where a Golf BlueMotion would stop on a single tank of fuel, with the car itself as the prize for the correct guess.
The E6 holds a particular resonance in the Norwegian imagination. It runs the length of the country from Oslo northward, functioning as Norway's answer to Route 66 — a road with genuine cultural weight that TRY/Apt harnessed deliberately. By mapping the entire route as a roulette board within Google Maps and Street View, Volkswagen gave participants a navigable, visual playing field rather than a simple online form. Anyone in Norway could zoom into the highway, inspect the landscape, and plant their bet on a precise location where they believed the Golf BlueMotion would exhaust its tank.
The campaign operated in the Norwegian market as a proof-of-concept for the Golf BlueMotion's diesel fuel efficiency credentials. Volkswagen drove the car north from Oslo along the E6 after the betting window closed, with the drive lasting approximately 27 hours according to Sunmatrix. The live nature of the activation gave the campaign a tension that static advertising could not replicate. Nearly 50,000 people placed bets, and approximately the same number visited the campaign website on the day of the drive itself, according to Sunmatrix. One participant whose selected location matched the car's stopping point won the vehicle outright. The Clapboard Score for the campaign is 83 out of 100.
Volkswagen built 'Roulette' on a consumer insight that is particularly acute in Norway. Fuel economy is not merely a purchasing consideration in the Norwegian market — it is a lived concern shaped by the country's geography, long inter-city distances, and a politically engaged environmental consciousness. To claim diesel efficiency in a print ad is one thing; to demonstrate it by driving the length of a nationally iconic highway on one tank is another category of proof entirely.
The strategic decision to use Google Maps and Street View as the campaign's primary interface was deliberate and market-aware. By 2011, Google Maps had become a near-universal navigation tool across Norway, meaning TRY/Apt could meet participants inside a digital environment they already trusted and understood. The roulette mechanic added competitive tension: participants were not simply watching a demonstration, they were staking a claim on a specific location, which gave them a personal reason to follow the car's progress in real time.
In the broader European automotive context, Volkswagen was competing directly with marques such as Toyota and its well-established hybrid efficiency narrative, as well as Ford, which was simultaneously promoting its own fuel economy credentials across European diesel models. According to Autoblog, Volkswagen Group sold approximately 8.16 million vehicles globally in 2011, reflecting the scale of the brand's commercial ambition at the time. Within Norway specifically, where electric vehicle adoption was already accelerating by 2011, positioning the Golf BlueMotion as the rational diesel choice required more than a specification claim — it required a demonstration that felt definitive. The E6 drive delivered exactly that, framing the BlueMotion's range not as a manufacturer's figure but as a publicly witnessed event verified by nearly 50,000 independent observers.
TRY/Apt built 'Roulette' around a central creative conceit that is structurally elegant. The E6 highway, according to Clapboard, was divided into approximately 880,000 car-length segments, each of which became a potential betting position on the roulette board. That granularity transformed an abstract highway into something precise and navigable, giving participants the sensation of genuine agency over their choice rather than a randomised lottery entry.
Art directors Markus Lind and Thorbjørn Ruud shaped the visual language of the campaign, integrating the roulette board aesthetic directly into the Google Maps and Street View interface so that the familiar navigation tool became the game board itself. Copywriters Anders Holm, Petter Bryde, Sebastian Prestø, and Eva Sannum handled the campaign's voice and participant communication. Flash developers Knut Skåla and Emil Jonsson, alongside developer Anders Stalheim Øfsdahl, built the interactive platform that handled the volume of participants — a technically significant undertaking given the approximately 50,000 concurrent users reported on the day of the drive, according to Sunmatrix.
Sound production was handled by Plan8, and 3D and visual effects work was delivered by Gimpville, giving the campaign's presentation a production quality that elevated it beyond a typical promotional microsite. Account managers Ole Hustad and Morten Polmar, with project managers Cecilie Fasbender and Cathrine Wennersten, coordinated the live activation element — the 27-hour drive north from Oslo along the E6 — which required logistical precision to match the digital experience participants had already invested in. The campaign's reliance on Google Maps and Street View as infrastructure rather than backdrop was, in 2011, an early and confident use of platform-native interactivity in automotive advertising in the Norwegian market.
No independently verified performance data beyond participation figures for 'Roulette' is publicly available in terms of sales impact or media-value equivalency. What is documented, however, is substantive. According to Sunmatrix, nearly 50,000 people placed location bets during the campaign's active window, and approximately 50,000 people visited the campaign website on the day of the live drive. For a digital activation in Norway in 2011 — a market with a total population of approximately five million at the time, according to Statistics Norway — those figures represent meaningful national reach for a single-product campaign.
The structural effectiveness of 'Roulette' rests on several compounding mechanisms. First, the prize mechanic — an actual Golf BlueMotion awarded to the correct participant — ensured that participation carried genuine stakes. Second, the live 27-hour drive, as reported by Sunmatrix, created a sustained engagement window that extended well beyond a single campaign moment. Third, the use of Google Maps and Street View as the campaign interface meant that every participant who engaged was simultaneously experiencing the BlueMotion's claimed range as a navigable, geographic reality rather than a specification on a brochure. The campaign also marked a meaningful evolution in TRY/Apt's relationship with Volkswagen Norway, moving the brand from conventional creative advertising into participatory digital demonstration — a format shift that aligned with the Golf BlueMotion's core efficiency argument more directly than any conventional media placement could have achieved.
Volkswagen's 'Roulette' campaign launched in Norway in August 2011. Created by TRY/Apt, it transformed the E6 highway into a digital roulette board using Google Maps and Street View, inviting participants to bet on exactly where a Golf BlueMotion would stop after driving on a single tank of diesel fuel, with the car as the prize.
Participants used Google Maps and Street View to select a precise location along Norway's E6 highway. Each position represented a segment of the route where they predicted the Golf BlueMotion would run out of fuel. The participant whose chosen location matched the car's actual stopping point after the live drive won the vehicle.
E6 is Norway's longest highway and the country's cultural equivalent of Route 66, according to Clapboard. Its length and national significance made it a credible proving ground for the Golf BlueMotion's fuel efficiency. Driving the full route on one tank gave the demonstration geographic scale that resonated meaningfully with a Norwegian audience.
According to Sunmatrix, nearly 50,000 people placed bets identifying their predicted stopping point along the E6 highway. Approximately the same number visited the campaign website on the day Volkswagen conducted the live drive north from Oslo, indicating that participation and real-time audience engagement were roughly equivalent in scale.
TRY/Apt, based in Oslo, Norway, created the campaign. Art directors Markus Lind and Thorbjørn Ruud led the visual execution. Copywriters included Anders Holm, Petter Bryde, Sebastian Prestø, and Eva Sannum. Flash developers Knut Skåla and Emil Jonsson built the interactive platform, with sound by Plan8 and visual effects by Gimpville.
The Volkswagen 'Roulette' campaign received a Clapboard Score of 83 out of 100. This reflects the campaign's structural ingenuity, its effective use of Google Maps and Street View as a participatory platform, and the credibility of the live E6 drive as a real-world demonstration of the Golf BlueMotion's diesel fuel efficiency.
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