OK GO: I WON’T LET YOU DOWN

Silver Spike
TitleOK GO: I WON’T LET YOU DOWN
BrandHONDA
Product / ServiceUNI-CUB
CategoryA06. Original Use of Music
EntrantMORI Tokyo, JAPAN
Entrant Company MORI Tokyo, JAPAN
Contributing Company MORI Tokyo, JAPAN
Contributing Company 2 DRILL Tokyo, JAPAN
Contributing Company 3 DENTSU Tokyo, JAPAN
Production Company MORIMORI Tokyo, JAPAN

Credits

Name Company Position
Morihiro Harano Mori Creative Director 
Jun Nishida Drill Art Director
Kazuaki Seki  Triple O Director
Damian Kulash, Jr. OK Go Director
furitsukekagyou air:man furitsukekagyou air:man Choreographer
Yusuke Kitani kaibutsu Interactive
Ryo Tsukiji Birdman Interactive
Makoto Kubota Making-of
Makoto Okuguchi tsuji management Cameraman
Akiyoshi Irio Lighting
Takashi Taniguchi O.F-inc. GRIP
Taito Oyama Progressive DIT
Kenji Yasuda Multi-Copter Pilot
Munechika Inudo Mark Mass Games Design + Previsualization
Yoshifumi Sadahara Mark Mass Games Design + Previsualization
Mitsuru Yamamori morimori Producer
Hideaki Jinbo Assistant-director
Satoshi Miyata morimori Production Manager
Shiro Miyamoto Dentsu Agency Producer
Shunsuke Kakuuchi Mark Online Editor

The Campaign

In Japan, Branded Entertainment is still considered as an immature industry. The most common is the traditional way of sponsoring the TV program and only a few clients and entertainment companies has worked together directly.

Results

UNI-CUB is a new personal mobility device developed by Honda. For its global branding effort, they created a 'collaborative music video' with popular band, OK Go. The entire video was filmed in one continuous shot with a drone from 0 meters to 700 meters above ground. In 10 hours the video reached 1 million views. In 6 days, 10 million and currently 20 million and counting. The microsite provided the making-of, product information and an interactive video which allowed users to design their own mass game. The sequential launches kept the campaign viral for a long period of time.

The mass-game performance by the band and dancers on the UNI-CUBs, the footage shot by the custom-made drone ― those 'never-before-seen' images captured the global audiences instantly. The video was filmed without any cuts from 0 meter up till 700 meter above the ground and this 'single-shot' footage amazed the viewers.

We reached the client's target, 1,000,000 views, in 10 hours after the launch. Our target was challenging , 10,000,000 views, but reached this in one week. Now the video has earned over 20,000,000 views. The global audiences love the film, and praise Honda for supporting the production. The page views of the campaign website reached 241,000, the unique users counted to 211,000, and over 62,000 user-generated videos have been created so far. The number of access to Honda's UNI-CUB global website increased by 1,487% compared with the same time last year. (19,637 PV March 2014, and 291,968 PV, March 2015)

Most notably, this collaborative output pushed the relationship between 'the artist and brand' to the next level. In most cases, the production process of music video requires only an artist and film director, and the primary role of a sponsor is limited to product placement. However in this case, the creative director from agency was at the centre of creative process; neither the client nor the artist compromises the output and found the best solution. Honda's involvement on this project was not so-called 'product placement', but played an essential role to make this entertainment happen, and brought about an outcomes more that what we all envisioned.