Brilliant Machines Rock
GE
Issue 30 | March 2014
Agency
BBDO New York
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officers David Lubars Greg Hahn Senior Creative Directors Eric Cosper Michael Aimette Creative Director/Copywriter Tim Roan Art Directors Sarah Kara Andrew Chin Executive Producer Anthony Nelson Senior Integrated Producer Neely Lisk Agency Producer Michael Gentile Head of Music Production Rani Vaz Illustrator Bose Collins
Production Team
Production Company Magnetic Content Director Lawrence Chen Composer Nick Andre Mix/Sound Design Corey Bauman
Other Credits
Account Team Emma Armstrong Peter McCallum Tessa Cosenza David Slifer
Date
December 2013
Background
GE was running an integrated campaign under the title "Brilliant Machines". In this instance, they wanted to communicate memorably that GE power turbine technology was helping to power the city of New York. The idea needed to be personal, surprising, engaging and fun.
Idea
When the creative team began asking what they might plug into NYC's power grid that would be fun, the answer turned out to be a robot rock band from Berlin called Compressorhead.
By putting on a free rock concert in Union Square, brilliant machines would power Brilliant Machines.
The show was treated like any other concert event. Wild postings were seeded around New York and teaser videos were pushed through GE's media channels. In partnership with Spotify, the concert was live-streamed and Spotify users were challenged to create the ultimate robot rock-band set list.
At the event, free power stations were provided, free Wi-Fi was provided and glow-in-the-dark guitar picks were handed out.
Results
Although the event was specific to New York, it got a lot of love online through #brilliantmachines. There were: 1.8+ million live-stream impressions, 100,000+ YouTube views of pre-seed videos, 700,000+ Twitter impressions, 1.3+ million Facebook impressions and much PR both online and offline. More importantly, lots of people turned up for the concert and passersby were drawn into the event.
Our Thoughts
There were two submissions to Directory 30 featuring GE ideas. One was all about squirrels and was just nutty.
But this was a head-banging idea.
It may appear simple now to link a German robot band with GE turbines and get the robots to play a free concert (brilliant machines powering brilliant machines, yes we got it!) but it would not have been when the brief first came in to the creative department. I think this is a great idea even though, personally speaking, I don’t think Compressorhead’s version of Motorhead’s classic Ace of Spades was their best effort. So, check out their cover of AC/DC’s TNT at http:// compressorheadband.com/media/. But be sure to turn down the volume!