The Self Driving Bike

The media picked it up with coverage on NOS, RTL Nieuws, Editie NL, Hart van Nederland and talkshows like PAUW and RTL Late Night. It appeared on almost every news website like Nu.nl, Nos.nl, Bright.nl etcetera. Coverage went international with publications on Buzzfeed, Gizmodo and Time. Time even nominated it as the best April Fools' joke of 2016. 

• In the Netherlands the reach was over 10,5 million
• On YouTube the film was viewed over 3.8 million times
• On top of that, the film was viewed over 15 million times on other social media

All with zero media budget.

The self-driving technology for cars, developed by Google, is one of the most discussed technological introductions of today. However, for the people in The Netherlands the car isn’t the main transportation vehicle. That's the bike. So, the ultimate technological improvement for mobility in The Netherlands would logically be a self-driving bike. 

The same path was chosen as with the introduction of a great technological innovation as we know it: through a product-intro film. A voice over tells us about a problem that has to be solved. A designer tells about the innovation and the CEO (the real CEO of Google Netherlands) explains us the vision of this idea. The real deputy mayor, Kajsa Ollongren, and the head of the national bike-association (the real head of the bike-association) confirm the importance of the innovation. We also see different users giving their testimonial. As the video continues, it gets more and more over the top, what makes the question rise: Is this real or fake? Exactly what we wanted. 

At the same time the take-out is: although it might be fake, the idea is not so bad at all. Why shouldn't we introduce a self-driving bike. This contributes to the goal of showing that Google always works on innovation making the everyday life easier and better.

The April Fools’ Day joke by Google is a worldwide phenomenon. The Dutch Google Zoo team started with the idea of using April Fools’ Day in The Netherlands in order to underline the core value of Google (make the everyday life easier and better). With all the rapid technological developments of today, it seemed to be the perfect moment to put all technology and innovations into perspective and make them a little bit more humane. By doing so, we tried to focus on the typical Dutch tradition of cycling. Google's creative team (Google Zoo) joined forces with us. 

The main objective of this project was to show people that Google not only is one of the most innovative technological companies, but also one of the most fun companies in the world. Everyday, Google tries to make the everyday life easier and better. 

We wanted to do so by introducing a product innovation which is typically charming for the people of The Netherlands. Too good to be true for now, but who knows what the future will bring us. With a positive result for our brand reputation.