What it had to solve
Blue Monday, the third Monday of January, is billed as the year's most depressing day and a moment brands borrow. VW wanted its ID. Buzz launch to radiate the positivity of the van's sixties heritage in the gloomiest weeks of the year.
The idea
The van has sunshine in its DNA, so the ad literally emits it: a billboard made of SAD lamps that lifts commuters' mood while they stand in front of it.
How it works
At Sutton Walk bridge near Waterloo station, BBH and a team of engineers and designers at The Glue Society assembled dozens of the same SAD lamps used on desks into one billboard emitting sunlight-mimicking light, powered by 100% renewable energy from Green Voltage UK, and ran it on Blue Monday, 16 January 2023, under the invitation 'Recharge Here'.
What it did
No measurable results were published; the installation drew trade coverage on LBB and gave the electric van a physical demonstration of its 'electric sunshine' positioning.
Background
On Blue Monday, 16 January 2023, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles and BBH switched on a billboard near Waterloo station that worked as a giant SAD lamp — the light therapy used to ease winter-onset Seasonal Affective Disorder. Commuters and passers-by at Sutton Walk bridge could pause and recharge in light that mimics the sun on a cold, overcast London day.
The installation was the centrepiece of the campaign for the ID. Buzz, VW's first fully electric van, which launched in the UK at the start of December. BBH creative director Stuart Royall: 'we wanted to give passers-by the next best thing' to the sun — 'like a little ray of (electric) sunshine.' The billboard was devised by BBH, created with engineers and designers at The Glue Society, and powered by 100% renewable electric energy from Green Voltage UK.
Laura Bignall, brand and performance manager at Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, framed it as brightening the days of people going through the trying start of the year, with the van — 'whose smile is infectious' — as the product behind it.
Why it lands
It turns a product story — first electric van, sixties Californian positivity heritage — into something you feel rather than read.
Blue Monday gives media a hook, and a working SAD lamp gives the stunt a useful function, not just spectacle.
Scaling a familiar desk object to billboard size makes the idea instantly legible and photographable.
What you can take
Demonstrate the claim instead of saying it: a mood lift commuters can feel on their own faces in January says more about an electric van than any charging stat.
Since then
LBB documented the installation on 17 January 2023; no follow-up results were published.
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