Let’s be honest. You see someone glide silently past in a new electric vehicle, and your brain’s stereotype-generator kicks into high gear. Are they a tech bro with a Bluetooth-enabled bellybutton? A “hipster smoothie lover” who barters exclusively in crypto? Or perhaps a card-carrying member of an eco-warrior cult that meets on Tuesdays to hug trees? It’s a perception problem that has left many drivers on the fence, and Škoda UK has decided it’s time for a hilarious intervention.
The Czech brand has just launched its new ad campaign, cheekily titled ‘Electric, but Škoda’, aimed squarely at those of us still nervously clutching our petrol pump nozzles. The mission is to dismantle the wall of weird misconceptions that makes EVs feel like they belong to some other tribe and to prove that its electric range is for the everyday, non-hummus-obsessed driver.
The centerpiece is a brilliant 60-second TV and cinema spot set on the most relatable of battlegrounds: the British cul-de-sac. A family pulls up in their shiny new Škoda EV, and the neighbourhood watch (aka the curtain-twitching gossips) goes into overdrive. The whispers fly: “They must be part of a cult,” “I bet they paid with crypto,” “Definitely tree huggers. “The punchline arrives when the new arrivals turn out to be so fantastically normal it’s almost disappointing for the neighbours. No chanting, no weird handshakes, just a family in a car.
Škoda isn’t just stopping at the telly ad. This is a full-scale assault on EV clichés, developed with the award-winning agency Leo Burnett UK. They’re flooding social media with snappy films on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok that directly call out the “tech bros” and “smoothie drinkers.” They’ve even created animations that parody those gossipy neighbourhood WhatsApp groups we all secretly love to read. To top it off, a paid social series called ‘Ask Škoda’ will feature these nosy neighbour characters asking the very questions many people have about going electric, aiming to educate audiences in an engaging way.
So, what’s the big idea? Kirsten Stagg, Škoda UK’s Head of Marketing, notes that the car industry often treats EVs like a “completely separate category,” which creates a sense of “otherness” that puts people off. “With this campaign,” she says, “we wanted to show that Škoda simply makes great cars, some of which just happen to be electric.
“It’s a refreshingly simple message: it’s a car, not a mandatory lifestyle statement. The goal was to deliver this in a “bold, creative, and hopefully clever way that makes people smile.” This move is classic Škoda, practical, clever, and with a wry smile. It’s a brand that has been part of the formidable Volkswagen Group for over 30 years and has big plans to become one of Europe’s top five best-selling brands by the end of the decade. By tackling the cultural cringe around EVs head-on, they’re not just selling cars like the Enyaq or Elroq; they’re selling normality. They’re telling the world you can have an electric car and still be, well, you.
