We reviewed Audi’s brand-building campaign for the new A1 last week, taking a look at the trailer to its new 6-part short-film called “The Next Big Thing”.
Well this afternoon the first episode was broadcast which shows John Frank (Justin Timberlake) in a café where he meets the attractive and mysterious Toni (Dania Ramirez) who is being followed by a group of armed bad guys.
The film starts well enough showing the suited John Frank being brow-beaten by his boss over the phone as he sits in a noisy café, whilst simultaneously writing emails on his laptop. His quality of life is painted as being dull, stressed-out and unrewarding.
Then along comes Toni and the bright-red Audi A1, who jumps him in the café, before telling him to “..get down,… they’ll kill everybody”.
The plot races ahead (rather too quickly) as our lead character is rushed out of the café without time to grab his laptop, as both are pursued by the armed assailants.
Episode 1 finishes as Toni throws the keys of the Audi A1 to John as he asks “what the hell’s going on?”, to which Miss Ramirez replies in an oh-so-clumsy manner “..it’s the next big thing!”
To give the actors due credit, the episode only lasts for 2:11 minutes, of which half the time is used for the introductory credits, so it was bound to feel rushed, but it’s now up to you to decide if Audi’s efforts are judged to be well spent by watching and then (perhaps) recommending the movie to your friends.
Will it go viral? Or will we judge it as a marketing stunt without sufficient depth of engagement or relevance to us ordinary folk in the real world?
So far, we certainly prefer BMW’s ‘The Hire’ films primarily because each film is a complete story and therefore has time for a beginning, middle and ending. We’re not yet sure whether Audi’s film will scale the 100 million views achieved by BMW, but we certainly will be tuning in next Tuesday (11th) to find out what’s next for our reluctant hero.
How about you?
UPDATE: (07/05/2010) Audi have released a new video taking a closer look at the film’s main cast.
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The general buzz around the net is to instantly compare this series to the BMW’s ‘The Hire’ mini-series and the initial comparisons aren’t favourable towards Audi’s clip.
I know it’s only 1/6 but I can’t help but feel they’ve screwed up in a few areas here. BMW’s series worked because everything was done on a grand scale – the famous directors, the big budget stunts, the largest and most gadget filled BMW available at the time (which had a strong reputation after its Tomorrow Never Dies appearance) and a globally “cool” alpha actor in Clive Owen. All of these ingredients made men and women want to share these videos around, so even if you weren’t into Owen you could enjoy the incredible stunts, if you didn’t like the crazy directing you could admire the amazing car packed with tech goodies etc.
Here however, Audi’s got a small A1 (why not use an R8?), no visible stunts yet, a musician-cum-actor that 99% of men do not find cool at all (way to alienate more than 1/2 your target audience), a relatively unknown actress and a very confusing strap-line. I just can’t see how this series is going to connect with its viewers and make them want to share, re-tweet, discuss and so forth the series of clips.
I guess in short what I’m trying to say is I doubt this will receive 100,000,000 views like BMW’s “The Hire.”
The general buzz around the net is to instantly compare this series to the BMW’s ‘The Hire’ mini-series and the initial comparisons aren’t favourable towards Audi’s clip.
I know it’s only 1/6 but I can’t help but feel they’ve screwed up in a few areas here. BMW’s series worked because everything was done on a grand scale – the famous directors, the big budget stunts, the largest and most gadget filled BMW available at the time (which had a strong reputation after its Tomorrow Never Dies appearance) and a globally “cool” alpha actor in Clive Owen. All of these ingredients made men and women want to share these videos around, so even if you weren’t into Owen you could enjoy the incredible stunts, if you didn’t like the crazy directing you could admire the amazing car packed with tech goodies etc.
Here however, Audi’s got a small A1 (why not use an R8?), no visible stunts yet, a musician-cum-actor that 99% of men do not find cool at all (way to alienate more than 1/2 your target audience), a relatively unknown actress and a very confusing strap-line. I just can’t see how this series is going to connect with its viewers and make them want to share, re-tweet, discuss and so forth the series of clips.
I guess in short what I’m trying to say is I doubt this will receive 100,000,000 views like BMW’s “The Hire.”
The general buzz around the net is to instantly compare this series to the BMW’s ‘The Hire’ mini-series and the initial comparisons aren’t favourable towards Audi’s clip.
I know it’s only 1/6 but I can’t help but feel they’ve screwed up in a few areas here. BMW’s series worked because everything was done on a grand scale – the famous directors, the big budget stunts, the largest and most gadget filled BMW available at the time (which had a strong reputation after its Tomorrow Never Dies appearance) and a globally “cool” alpha actor in Clive Owen. All of these ingredients made men and women want to share these videos around, so even if you weren’t into Owen you could enjoy the incredible stunts, if you didn’t like the crazy directing you could admire the amazing car packed with tech goodies etc.
Here however, Audi’s got a small A1 (why not use an R8?), no visible stunts yet, a musician-cum-actor that 99% of men do not find cool at all (way to alienate more than 1/2 your target audience), a relatively unknown actress and a very confusing strap-line. I just can’t see how this series is going to connect with its viewers and make them want to share, re-tweet, discuss and so forth the series of clips.
I guess in short what I’m trying to say is I doubt this will receive 100,000,000 views like BMW’s “The Hire.”
Wow, this is a great marketing strategy by Audi especially by getting stars like Justin on board, I am already searching for more information.