Escape the Ordinary
Citroën DS3 Cabrio
Issue 29 | December 2013
Agency
CMW, London
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director Iain Hunter Art Director Dan Plotkin Copywriter George Leaney Business Director Davinia Ballin
Production Team
Plastic Thumb Live Ltd Atul Muhotra Producer Paul Cooke
Date
October 2013
Background
Citroën's new model proposition was 'Escape the Ordinary'. The brief was to bring this to life in a piece of online content which leveraged Citroën's sponsorship deal with Arsenal F.C. and simultaneously promoted the new Citroën DS3 Cabrio.
Idea
Professional footballers are extremely difficult to impress; their lives are about as far from the ordinary as it gets. The challenge, then, was to devise something so spectacular it would startle and amaze even this hard-to-impress group.
Because magic appeals to everyone, even young, talented and wealthy stars, the idea was to get the magician Drummond Money-Coutts to treat the soft-top Cabrio as he might his magician's hat. What remarkable things could he pull out of it?
In the video he got Arsenal goalie Wojciech Szczesny to choose a colour. He chose yellow. Aaron Ramsey chose a year (1971). And Per Mertsesacker chose the eight of diamonds from a pack of cards. Finally, Olivier Giroud was asked to think of a great Arsenal player he admired. He chose Ian Wright.
Abracadabra. Money-Coutts revealed a yellow DS3 cabrio with the number plate 1971, an eight of diamonds painted on the bonnet and Ian Wright sitting on the back seat.
Cue amazement of the footballers.
Results
Within two weeks the video had gained over 580,000 views on YouTube. It was featured in national media from The Mirror, Daily Mail and The Evening Standard to a host of car and sport blogs and websites.
Our Thoughts
Putting together branded content interesting enough for people to volunteer to go and watch it is a tricky business.
If you take a look at YouTube, Citroe¨n themselves have not found it easy. Their ‘Ballet’ video for the DS3 with Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Alex Song and Bacary Sagna managed 39,417 views in a year. And ‘Arsenal players wash the Citroen DS3’ has collected just 85.
It means creatives in agencies really have to up their game to come up with stunts that are genuinely gob-smacking and/or not just funny but incredibly funny.
This is the sort of video-based idea traditional above-the-line agencies do pretty well but here is integrated agency CMW showing they can do it as well as anyone.