General Motors

Dear Oil,
The goal was to convince America GM was serious about energy independence. The result was one of the most talked about ads that never ran. Google "GM breaks up with oil" for the full story.

May The Best Car Win
General Motors had just been bailed out by the federal government. Our job was to convince Americans to buy one of their cars. This wasn't a marketing problem. It was a suicide mission. In the end, we asked shoppers to compare for themselves -- and may the best car win. Our confident transparency seemed to work. For the first time in 21 months, sales at GM rose. And they continued to climb every month while the campaign ran.

Below are the videos that seeded the campaign. In less than a week, we had hundreds of thousands of people at our microsite (which is also below). The conversation had begun.

We convinced GM to launch the campaign with an unprecedented 60-Day Satisfaction Guarantee on every car. It was something no automaker had ever done before. And it calmed the fears of America's skeptical shoppers. Below is one of our page takeovers.

The campaign was supported with print across every GM brand. Our cars – and our confidence – took center stage.

We even turned the challenge into a TV show. To prove GM's performance chops, we had auto legend Bob Lutz lay it on the line: bring your car to the Monticello Motor Club and he'll race you in a Cadillac CTS-V. No other car companies had the cajones to show, but a lot of journalists, bloggers and gearheads did. Trash-talking started instantly on the web. Thousands followed live on Facebook and Twitter. The action aired a few weeks later on Speed Channel. Below is one of the promos we planted online.