The Detour
Nissan
Issue 31 | June 2014
Agency
Critical Mass, Calgary
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director Steve Savic Creative Director Jordon Mowbray Copy Director Peter von Sass Senior Art Director Carl Lukasewich Art Directors Darren Wood Euny Choi
Production Team
Producer Gene Ho Production Company Unit9 Interactive Director Anrick Bregman Frontend Developers Artur Gutkowski Marcin Lichwala Raphael Luchini Peter Altamirano Sound Design Richard Nathan Design Ruben Feurer UX Dustin Roxborough Animation Eric Schockmel
Other Credits
Senior Motion Designers Nick Warren Scott Malo Motion Design Director Amo Milosz Group Planning Director Chrissie Graboski Planning Director Kerry Janes
Date
January 2014
Background
The new Nissan Rogue was positioned as a car that made everyday driving more exciting. Nissan wanted to bring that stirring experience to anyone.
Idea
The Detour brought together Google Street View, Google Maps and Google Satellite API along with Hollywood-style digital effects and a soundtrack from rapper M.I.A., which was also available as a free download from Nissan's website.
What people could do was create a personalised drive starting from anywhere in the world that they chose.
It was a cinematic-style adventure, which, for tablet and mobile users, allowed them to launch the Rogue into the air with a swipe of the finger.
Viewers could also experience 'featured' test drives around major cities including San Francisco and New York. At the end of the drive they could contact their local dealer to arrange a test drive of the actual car.
Results
The site won FWA Site of the Day and received much attention in online news media. Test drive requests at dealerships surpassed expectations.
Our Thoughts
Creating successful advertising these days is all about collaboration. The agency here is Critical Mass but they needed to work with digital engineers from Unit9 and special effects gurus from Digital Domain as well as involving Google tecchies.
Bob Greenberg at Cannes a couple of years ago said that digital space is made for demonstrations of what your product can do. That’s what this is, a demo with a quick tour of the car’s interior thrown in, but because it’s clever (and if you want to know how complicated it was to build, go to www.unit9.com/project/nissan-rogue) it suggests without having to say it that the car must be pretty cool too. Which is cool.