Launching A Car With Disney Magic: Making The Chevy Bolt Campaign
The following are interview excerpts with CCO & Director Greg Harrison.
In this campaign, you bridge the worlds of entertainment & traditional brand advertising. How did that challenge you to think differently about your approach?
We see brand partnerships like mash-ups, and have done a number in the entertainment space. Whether it’s John Oliver showing up in Game Of Thrones for an HBO brand spot or merging the comic sensibilities of The Simpsons and FXX for the show’s launch on the network, we’ve had a lot of experience merging two brand voices into a single creative expression.
The Disney+Chevy Bolt EUV campaign was definitely one of the largest brand partnerships we’ve done, and our first automotive campaign. So while both Disney and Chevy agreed to a brand anthem approach with less focus on retail messaging, we still had to consider how to launch a new electric car to Chevy’s customers.
That meant everything from us poring over Chevy’s brand book, researching the car’s technology, and discussing marketing priorities with Disney and Chevy, to understanding how our creative execution could tell a cinematic and emotional story while seamlessly integrating the car’s new features and Chevy’s preferred angles of the car’s refreshed design.
How does your experience in entertainment marketing give a unique perspective when approaching brand advertising campaigns?
I think we have a unique perspective on both the creative and production process. Creatively, our teams are highly skilled in the visual and emotional impact of cinematic storytelling – thinking in pictures, sound design and music. Pairing that approach with our passion and knowledge of pop culture makes for a potent combination when creating partnership ideas for brands.
As an integrated agency, we like to say we can think strategically and execute at the speed of entertainment, and this campaign really put that to the test. We went from initial brief and campaign concepting, to scripting, production, editing and finishing in two months, all in-house and all while navigating dozens of layers of approvals across Disney and Chevy.
We relied on the skills we’ve developed in entertainment to be highly collaborative and transparent both internally and with clients, with direct connections between our makers and their stakeholders. I’m not sure there are many traditional brand agencies that could work at the scale, speed, and quality we did.
How did you use brand storytelling to highlight the "magic" of these two brands?
The exciting news was there was a lot of buy-in across the Disney portfolio to be part of the campaign, so we had access to some of the most magical and iconic properties in pop culture. Our work was focused on organically connecting those properties to the features and functions of the Bolt EUV.
The first moment that clicked was connecting Tinkerbell’s pixie dust to the magic of electric car tech, leading us to create a young Tinkerbell fan as the source of that pixie dust. In our creative meetings, we reminisced about the excitement of vacation road trips as kids, waking up before the sun. The darkness of pre-dawn gave us a perfect environment to link our girl’s pixie dust with the power of the Bolt EUV, lighting street lamps on Main Street as she and her family left town.
We then brainstormed dozens of tie-in moments between car features and Disney characters. Then, through a process of Disney prioritizing IP from Disney World rides, Chevy settling on the key features for the car, and our team vetting the most visually impactful combinations, we landed on the final spot.
The Bolt EUV’s rear camera mirror was a perfect connection to the ghosts’ mirror reflections in the Haunted Mansion ride; the car’s new, larger sunroof a perfect portal to discover a squadron of Dumbos; and racing an X-Wing across farmland a perfect cinematic expression of the car’s punch in Sport Mode.
Also, one of our concepts that ultimately didn’t make the main spot – connecting Groot’s protective orbs from Guardians Of The Galaxy to the safety of the Bolt EUV’s auto-drive feature – led to us creating an additional standalone spot.
You've worked with Disney properties in the past. How was this campaign similar and different from your previous experience?
We’ve had a 30+ year relationship with Disney, launching many of the classic and modern animation films for Disney and Pixar, as well as dozens of Marvel’s tentpole films and series in the last decade. So we had an incredible depth of knowledge of the Disney brand and stories from which to draw when bringing this campaign to life.
Our job was really to express what the two brands shared in values and audience. As we developed ideas with our clients in the Disney Corporate Alliances group, it really came down to the optimism, fun and innovation that both brands share.
Working at this brand level and then taking that work into an original two-plus minute brand film was a unique challenge, very different from creating a trailer and TV campaign for a single film or show. But it allowed us to flex all the other capabilities we’ve developed at our agency over the last 5 years.
To learn more, watch the Advertising Week panel below with MOCEAN's CCO Greg Harrison & COO Erica Coates, Walt Disney Company's VP Global Partnerships Chris Lisciandro & SVP Global Partnerships Mindy Hamilton, moderated by CEO Creativ Strategies Wes Morton.
