When Digital Goes Bad

‘So, I’ve just been given the brief to advertise the new Jeep. This Jeep is perceived as a big old thirsty vehicle that I imagine a slightly older person might drive, it’s certainly not a youth brandproduct. Obviously, I want people to re-assess how they look at this brand. I think we should make this product feel more youthful and trendy, a product someone like me would drive.

I have an insight for that kind of audience. My insight is that those kinds of people all have computers and therefore they all like Google. All I need to do is get some of the youthfulness and coolness of Google to rub off on my campaign and the cool people will be all over it.

And luckily, Google is a ‘search engine’ and the Jeep has an ‘engine’ – what if I combined those two things and called the Jeep a ‘search engine’ – that would be really clever and down with the kids.

Jeep Grand Cherokee – The Ultimate Search Engine.

Fuck I’m smart.

Good, now I’ll need some kind of digital thing to compliment my ads. The internet is good for competitions and everyone loves competitions – especially advertising competitions where they can win products. What’s also good about competitions is that because they are so rare and the chances of winning are always so high, people can’t help but enter all the competitions they encounter. Meaning that my idea will spread like wildfire and I might win an award.

An online competition about searching is the way forward.

Um. Ok, searching is a bit difficult to work with, what other digital things are there? Maps. Google does maps and I’ve seen something cool that adidas did with Street View and Star Wars which I can show the client. Maps are sort of like search.

It seems adidas cleverly used the visitors home address to make their idea relevant to the audience. Perfect. So, we have a Jeep and a street view house. I know that people park their cars outside their houses so what if we could let people park the Jeep outside their houses for the chance to win the vehicle? And then we could get them to take a virtual photo of the scene which they could submit – with the best one winning the car. Genius. And the best bit is that they how also get to see how the product looks on their drive.

A digital advertising street view photo virtual car game demo competition – what’s not to like?

That’s the hard bit done, now I just need to work out how the website works. Well, the Star Wars thing had a falling bit, so the Jeep should definitely randomly fall from the sky before arriving at the address.

Shit. There appear to be other cars on Street View – we’ll need to get rid of them. Seems like the only option is to use a blur overlay which looks really rubbish but means my idea will get made and I won’t have to think very hard (and I could still win that award). Obviously the Jeep will need to be manipulated so it can fit outside the house – I’m guessing we’ll need an ‘interface’ for that. I’m not that worried about the interface bit though, it’s not so important to the idea.

Right, almost done, just need to add a thing at the end that bribes people into spamming their friends and we’re good to go.

Honestly, this digital thing is a piece of piss.

Here.