Polestar lets an astronaut speak for the planet

A view from orbit as brand argument

On 22 October 2021, Polestar launches a new global brand campaign in traditional and social media across its key markets, set to run over the following months.^1,2 Its protagonist is not a driver and not a designer. It is Karen Nyberg, a former NASA astronaut who spent 180 days in space over two missions, including close to six months on the International Space Station in 2013 as flight engineer.¹

The campaign is built on a phenomenon some astronauts describe after seeing Earth from above: the overview effect, a shift in awareness about the planet as a whole.^1,3 Nyberg's line carries the campaign: "When you look down on Earth you realise how fragile it is."¹ The question the films put to the viewer, as LBB summarises it, is whether we can preserve Earth while still enjoying the thrill of being human.²

The film and its makers

The campaign is created by Forsman & Bodenfors, with the Swedish office as global lead and support from its offices in New York, Shanghai and Montreal.¹ Polestar's in-house creative team is credited as well.² The 60-second film is directed by Henry-Alex Rubin for the production company Smuggler, with cinematography by Crille Forsberg and music, "Electric Symphony", performed by Hanan Townshend.⁴ It is shot in Sweden, including on Gotland and in Stockholm.¹ On the agency side, Sophia Lindholm, Karl Risenfors and Leo Dal are credited as art directors and Hampus Elfström as copywriter; Dentsu handles media, and the stills are photographed by Stefan Isaksson.⁴ The client team listed for Polestar includes Åsa Borg and Pär Heyden.⁴

Hampus Elfström, creative at Forsman & Bodenfors, explains why the astronaut became the centre of the work: "Her story became the lead act in the film and gave us the unique angle we needed".² In the film itself Nyberg describes the moment of seeing the planet: "Nothing prepared me for what I saw up there," and "I was overwhelmed by its beauty."⁴

Sustainability as the new premium

The brand's own argument comes from Åsa Borg, Head of Marketing at Polestar: "We believe that sustainability is the new premium".^1,2 She sets the campaign against a sense of urgency: "We are standing at a tipping point where climate change is no longer a theory."¹ And she ties the brand's technical ambition to the same condition: "Innovation should not come at the expense of the planet."⁴

The sentence on premium is the strategic core. Car brands have traditionally defined premium through materials, power and prestige. Polestar places the environmental footprint of the car in the same category, as something a buyer pays for and is proud of. The campaign does not show a race track or a spec sheet. It shows a person who has seen the whole planet and speaks for it, and it lets the product follow from that.

The release ties the campaign to concrete claims rather than to atmosphere alone. Polestar points to the Polestar 2 as an all-electric car, to its publication of the full life cycle assessment of the Polestar 2, which it says is a first in the car industry, to blockchain tracing of cobalt in its batteries, and to the Polestar 0 project, its goal to create a truly climate-neutral car by 2030.¹ The astronaut provides the emotional frame; the disclosures provide the proof the brand wants the frame to rest on.

Owned content beside the film

On the day of the release Polestar publishes a longer interview with Nyberg on its own site, "The Overview Effect with Karen Nyberg".³ There she describes time in the space station's cupola as one of her favourite things and the sunsets as amazing, and makes a candid admission: "Before my time in space, I think I was mostly indifferent to environmental issues."³ The conclusion she draws is modest: "Little things make a difference."³

The admission matters for the brand. Nyberg is not presented as an activist recruited for a message, but as someone whose view changed through experience. That mirrors the conversion Polestar asks of its buyers: not a sacrifice for the planet, but a change of perspective in which the electric car becomes the obvious premium choice. "And it's our home. We need to protect it," she says in the interview.³

A brand voice for a young carmaker

Four years after its launch as a standalone electric performance brand, Polestar uses the campaign to say what it stands for beyond its cars. Elfström describes the intention as capturing "the empathy she developed for our planet".¹ The choice of a witness rather than a celebrity keeps the tone close to the brand's Scandinavian restraint: one voice, landscapes from Gotland and Stockholm, and a claim about the planet that the brand then has to substantiate in its own reports.¹ No results of the campaign are published.