How 500 Million Year Old Ichy Became Škoda's New Brand Character

The search for comfort has always driven humans to explore. That idea sits at the heart of Škoda’s launch campaign for its new electric vehicle, the Peaq, and inspired a brand mascot 500 million years in the making: Ichy, an Ichthyostega taking its first steps on land.

Created by AMV BBDO, the campaign follows the prehistoric half-fish, half-amphibian as curiosity draws him away from the sea and into the hazards of evolution. His journey is designed to dramatise the comfort offered by the Peaq while bringing Škoda’s creative platform, Let’s Explore, to life.

Tom Lindo, senior strategy director, and Giovanni Greco, creative director, discuss the development of the global campaign, its central character, and the challenge of making comfort feel adventurous. The work is running across TV, digital, out-of-home, and social.

What was the initial brief?

Tom: Present the new Peaq to the world. That was the ask. Peaq is a very special car for Škoda, a step into a completely new and more premium category. To us, that was a bold and confident move by the brand. And the client wanted the work to match it. They pushed us to be distinct, to make something that felt as new as the car. So the question we set ourselves was simple. What does confidence actually look like?

What prompted the initial idea for Ichy, and why an Ichthyostega?

Tom: It started with the car itself. The designers explained that they knew they had to take confident leaps to justify a car this high-end coming from Škoda. Every detail was considered, from the comfort of the materials to which speaker provider would deliver the best in-car entertainment.

Giovanni: These are confident moves from a manufacturer like Škoda, which got us thinking about the ultimate act of confidence, and we found it about 500 million years ago, in a creature born in the sea that decided to crawl out. The Ichthyostega is the first thing we know of that was curious enough, bold enough and brave enough to try. It also fit what Škoda was actually doing, a brand taking its first step onto new ground, needed a story about exactly that.

Did Škoda need a brand character to launch the Peaq?

Tom: The short answer is no; it wasn't a "need." But we believe a great character can do wonders, especially for global campaigns. A character can embody a brand's values and act as a shortcut to delivering the right message for a specific model.

Why are brand characters still such a powerful tool for advertisers?

Giovanni: Because attention is rented and characters are owned. A character carries the brand's meaning in a single frame, works with the sound off, survives being cropped to a six-second cutdown, and gets better the more people see it rather than worse. Most advertising has to reintroduce itself every time a character walks in, and everyone already knows who it is. That's a rare kind of compound interest.

Once the idea of Ichy was agreed, how did you develop the campaign around it? What roles did Untold Play and director Sam Brown play?

Giovanni: The script was very simple, but Sam took the story somewhere better. His instinct was to make the world hard. This is prehistory, so we have erupting volcanoes, the skeletons of fish that didn't make it, and a landscape actively telling Ichy to turn around. The bigger the challenge, the bigger the courage has to be. That was his contribution, and it's the reason the film has stakes.

Untold did an incredible job bringing his and our vision to life. From the first sketches through to the final frame, they took what was in our heads and gave it skin, weight and personality. He had to feel real enough to root for and characterful enough to love; they nailed both.

What makes a Škoda campaign? What are the consistent elements, apart from the cars?

Tom: Tone of voice and an understated sense of humour. Škoda has both, and neither belongs to anyone else. That is the thread. The brand line is "Let's Explore", and we read it as a brief to ourselves as much as a promise to the customer. Explore new ways to make car advertising. Because the category is wallpaper-y. Beautiful cars on beautiful roads, with beautiful people living a beautiful life. Many times you could swap the logos and nobody would notice. The consistency across Škoda work is a refusal to do that. It helps that the client wants it too.

Giovanni: On Peaq they pushed us for our boldest, most distinct work yet, which is the best brief a creative can get. Every campaign starts with the same question. What would nobody else in this category do? This time, a prehistoric fish walking over a 90s hip hop track felt like a good answer.

Who chose Aim and YZ's ‘Ain't Got Time to Waste’ to accompany the campaign, and why?

Giovanni: The track was in the very first script presentation, and it never moved. We wanted swagger, but not the obvious kind; 90s hip hop was the bold call. It's a track with attitude that doesn't need to prove anything, which is precisely the tone of the film and precisely the tone of the car. Putting it against a prehistoric landscape and a four-legged fish shouldn't work. That's exactly why it does.

How will Ichy be used across the campaign’s various platforms? What does having a central character allow you to do?

Giovanni: Like any good character, he travels, DOOH, social, and plenty more to come. That's the gift of a character: you're not repeating a message at different sizes, you're giving one personality different rooms to walk into. He can be heroic in a film, funny in a six-second cutdown, and present on a poster, and it's all the same idea. It buys you range without losing coherence.

Will Ichy return? What is the potential for the character?

Giovanni: Ichy already made a legendary comeback after 500 million years, so we wouldn't bet against him doing it again.