SMART NEEDLE

TitleSMART NEEDLE
BrandDAIMLER AG / SMART
Product/ServiceSMART FORTWO
Category G03. Illustration
Entrant BBDO DÜSSELDORF, GERMANY
Idea Creation BBDO DÜSSELDORF, GERMANY
Credits
Name Company Position
Wolfgang Schneider BBDO Group Germany GmbH Chief Creative Officer
Ton Hollander BBDO Duesseldorf GmbH Chief Creative Officer / Executive Creative Director
Darren Richardson BBDO Duesseldorf GmbH Chief Creative Officer
Kristoffer Heilemann BBDO Duesseldorf GmbH Creative Managing Director
Fabiano Oliveira Proximity Worldwide GmbH Creative Director
Till Overwien Proximity Worldwide GmbH Art Director
Albert Pozo Proximity Worldwide GmbH Designer
Mike Bayfield Proximity Worldwide GmbH Senior Copywriter
Farhad Abasov Proximity Worldwide GmbH DTP / Retouch
Steffen Günther BBDO Berlin GmbH Account Director
Caspar Pongs BBDO Berlin GmbH Junior Account Manager
Allison Markert BBDO Berlin GmbH Agency Producer
Eva à Wengen BBDO Duesseldorf GmbH Art Buyer
Carlo Stanga - Illustrator
Bernhard Burg BBDO Duesseldorf GmbH Director Print Production

The Campaign

We wanted to show the challenge and obstacles big cities present to drivers and how a smart can overcome these. So we took a simple metaphor to demonstrate this fact – threading a needle. Everybody knows how difficult this is to do – just like driving a big car through a busy city. But in a Smart its easy, because a Smart can thread its way effortlessly and easily through London, Berlin, Paris… by finding the gaps other cars can’t. Part of the city, but never held back by it.

Creative Execution

To powerfully communicate our message, we needed to convey the character and charm of the smart: together with the life, character and craziness of the big city. The city is represented by the needle. So we needed to capture the essence of it by using as our subjects, three leading European cities – for our cosmopolitan European audience. To do this we chose a hand-drawn line illustration style, to bring the cities to life in a cartoon-like way. Using iconic features and landmarks of each city, together with more generic urban elements, such as streets, cars, people, birds and planes we created chaotic, unique and instantly recognisable urban scenes. The thread going through the needle was then the road. The smart itself is on this road, heading onwards in the far distance, having easily weaved through all the obstacles the city can throw at it.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

These three pieces of illustration added value to the brand by reinforcing the position of smart, in a simple, powerful and charming manner. By using the threading a needle metaphor - everybody knows how difficult this is to do - we made people feel what is drive in evermore congested city traffic. The detailed illustration allowed the target audience to explore it, discover local highlights, helping consumers warm more the brand and showed them how smart understands their urban lifestyles and works constantly to create the new city car generation.

Our target audience was 25-50 year old urban adults, who spend their lives trying to navigate their way through the urban jungle. Whether it’s on the way to work, the supermarket, the shops or doing the school run, the city places many obstacles in their way. We wanted to reach our audience in this environment in which they live and move. So we chose touchpoints that would engage them at the most relevant moments, in the natural habitat of the smart itself: city streets. This maximised the relevance of the brand, by presenting the solution to a problem they were facing when they were facing it: while stuck in a gridlock in their cars.