Volkswagen Canada has released its new ad campaign to showcase five Beetle models with an interesting, interactive spin, using the help of the band Walk Off The Earth.
WOTE is known for its unique take on music, different ways of creating it and makes use of many musical genres. Longtime fans of Volkswagen, WOTE approached the company last year about working on a campaign together, but until recently VW didn’t feel they had a project suitable for which the band to collaborate.
The video uses WOTE’s song “Gang of Rhythm,” performed three times in these different styles: playful, soulful and powerful. Each version is very distinctive and the videos are equally different. The band collaborated with Volkswagen’s creative agency, Red Urban, to build this ad/music video around 5 current Beetle models.
Red Urban’s executive creative director, Christina Yu had this to say about WOTE requesting to work with VW in 2012: “At the time we didn’t have a suitable project for a collaboration with them. As we were working on the project for various Beetle models, we had an idea that used an annotated YouTube video. That reminded us of WOTE, so we gave them a call, and the ball just started rolling from there. We wanted the project to go further than a TV commercial and be truly engaging for our audience.”
The 11 minute video, when played straight through, is 3 complete versions of the song “Gang Of Rhythm,” (http://youtu.be/oIfsVtmFoqU) by Walk Off The Earth. On the screen are three buttons corresponding to each version. You can click each one during the song and it will begin playing that version at the point of the song where you left off, making the playback seamless. (I sat there for about 15 minutes clicking through them repeatedly to make different combinations of the song. It was neat!)
“We felt this was a great opportunity to harness technology and do something creative with it,” said Christine Yu.
