Anyone who drives remembers their first car. Now Subaru and its creative agency, Carmichael Lynch, are tapping into the emotion and memories of loving (or hating) your first car in a new integrated campaign for the new 2012 Subaru Impreza. The hub of the campaign is FirstCarStory.com features an amazing animation/video generator that allows users to recreate the story of their first car through bespoke animation, music, text and voiceover. The site then generates a really cool custom animated short story, which of course are sharable via users social networks.
"Everyone loved their first car, no matter how bad, beat up, or borrowed. That first car became a new chapter in life or a ticket to freedom and first car stories are often the most memorable stories we have," said Alan Bethke, director, marketing communications, Subaru of America. "The First Car Story campaign provides a creative outlet for reliving those unique, funny, unforgettable car experiences anyone who had a first car can relate to."
It's really worth playing with the site to get a full sense of what you can do. I love the idea of turning phrases or words that the user types in the story as a way to trigger a library of animations (ie. typing in pulled over by the cops triggers an animation in the video with sirens and handcuffs.) Another cool aspect is the ability to tag friends in the video, since many of our stories, memories, etc. from our first car include shared experiences with friends from yesteryear. FirstCarStory.com really takes the idea of creating bespoke and personalized content for the user a step further. All in all, just a great branded content tool to provide utility and entertainment to the user.
This really hits home for me, since I loved my first car, a beat up old, white '79 Buick Lesabre, so I took a stab at creating my own video, which you can see below.
Here's a story mashup that Subaru created to illustrate the tool.
Supporting Articles: Creativity
"Everyone loved their first car, no matter how bad, beat up, or borrowed. That first car became a new chapter in life or a ticket to freedom and first car stories are often the most memorable stories we have," said Alan Bethke, director, marketing communications, Subaru of America. "The First Car Story campaign provides a creative outlet for reliving those unique, funny, unforgettable car experiences anyone who had a first car can relate to."
This really hits home for me, since I loved my first car, a beat up old, white '79 Buick Lesabre, so I took a stab at creating my own video, which you can see below.
Here's a story mashup that Subaru created to illustrate the tool.
Supporting Articles: Creativity
