BYTON – European PR for a global EV launch

BYTON was one of the most closely watched electric car start-ups of its time. From late 2017 to spring 2020 we ran PR for the whole of Europe, working closely with the agencies in China and the USA. We delivered every event in Europe and accompanied top European journalists to the premieres in the USA and China.

It began in January 2018 with the world premiere of the BYTON Concept at CES in Las Vegas, followed by around 11,000 articles and social media posts in Europe alone. Next came the European premiere at Milan Design Week, a city tour through Europe with stops in Oslo, Amsterdam and Munich, and the premiere of the K-Byte sedan concept at CES Asia in Shanghai. In 2019 BYTON showed the production cockpit of the M-Byte at CES to around 800 international journalists. We took European media on an exclusive visit to the new plant in Nanjing, and at the IAA in Frankfurt the production M-Byte celebrated its world premiere, with a sneak preview for top media and a press conference covered from The Verge to Handelsblatt.

Coordination ran daily between Nanjing, Silicon Valley, Munich and Hamburg. The pandemic brought the end, and BYTON went into insolvency. What remains is the experience of positioning a new Chinese brand in Europe as a serious competitor from day one.