Saturday, February 11, 2012

OK Go+Chevy: An Exercise in Awesome

The post-Super Bowl ad chatter has pretty much centered on the clips of stunts featuring the all-new hot hatch the Chevy Sonic. A good looking car, agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners took it and the notion of "advertising stunts" literally to new heights under the mantra Let's Do This.



My fave stunt by far features YouTube darlings OK Go blasting through a 2.5 mile track lined with over 1,800 instruments in a highly-modified Sonic. The car and track were designed to actually play their song entitled: Needing/Getting. It's straight up awespirational. (Yeah, I just made that word up.)

What's fantastic about this form of advertising is that it's NOT advertising. It's just really good branded content, or in other words it's just really good branding. Period. I so wish more brands got this notion. I can honestly say, I dig the Sonic more because I now associate it with the high awesomeness degree of this stunt.

It also doesn't hurt one bit that this song rocks! I've always liked OK Go, but I straight up LOVE this song. What's even more awesome is the fact that they thought to embed a free download of the track into the campaign site. Seriously smart.

There's an excellent behind-the-scenes breakdown of the entire track on the Let's Do This site. Just click on the map on their site and a slideshow launches explaining the entire set up. Kudos to the creative team for capturing these sweet extras.

So for those of you taking notes: encouraging your clients to just be awesome is a totally and completely valid marketing strategy. Don't forget it.

1 comment:

Laurence Modithre said...

It’s a smart move by Chevy to cast OK Go on this commercial. Their new car, aptly named Sonic, corroborates the allusion of its meaning breaking the "speed of sound." Also, the choice of song is very appropriate--Needing/Getting sticks to the theme very much!