Case Study
Petersen Automotive Museum Digital Car Week

Client
Petersen Automotive Museum
Services
Public Relations
Creative
Event Marketing
Influencer Marketing
Dates
Aug 2020-Sept 2020
01 / The Challenge
A Virtual Approach
to Car Week
When the Petersen Automotive Museum was forced to close its doors to the public in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic Kahn Media was challenged to promote the museum’s virtual experiences, essentially helping them create a new business model to expand the museum’s reach and influence beyond its core market in Los Angeles and Southern California.
The largest virtual event during this major pivot was Petersen Car Week, the Petersen’s digital answer to the cancellation of one of the largest and most prestigious automotive events of the year – Monterey Car Week. The museum partnered with vehicle manufacturers, renowned collectors and various concours events to create exclusive content for its YouTube channel that was released on a set schedule designed to emulate the daily events that would have taken place across the Monterey peninsula. Kahn Media was tasked with the promotion of the event to an international audience – creating buzz about the event in the weeks leading up to its launch and promoting the individual videos as they rolled out.
02 / The Tactic
The Kahn Media team worked closely with the Petersen Automotive Museum’s team and the event’s 40 sponsors to promote the schedule of the individual virtual events taking place throughout Petersen Car Week. Leading up to each event, we pitched museum collection and shop tours as part of a “The Road to Car Week” campaign, reaching out to automotive, men’s lifestyle, local and business outlets daily to create buzz surrounding the upcoming virtual events.
Ahead of Car Week, our creative and PR teams executed and produced several event videos for the museum, including a Car Week promo video, the Bring a Trailer interview with Malcolm Gladwell, Sonoma Speed Festival montage, The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering and a virtual car show. We also maintained regular communication with the PR teams for the partners involved in Car Week, including Bonhams, Ford, Michelin and Porsche, to provide daily updates on all partnership coverage secured for Petersen Car Week.
Once the official events began, we produced daily media recaps providing links for journalists to assets and information to use for their coverage. These daily recaps included links to the YouTube videos with timecoded notes as well as descriptions of the individual videos. We received great feedback from the media, saying the recaps were extremely helpful in putting together their Petersen Car Week coverage.
Pitch, Curate and
Promote Content











Pitch
Connected with industry leaders
and key celebrities

Curate
Compiled, created, promoted
and executed content

Premiere
Coordinated daily media
recaps of live premieres
03 / The Results
International
Viewership