This isn’t the first time CSAA has used popular music to break through to its audience. We can’t outspend our competitors we have to outsmart them.” “Yet our budget is in the millions, not billions. “We have to make sure people understand what differentiates our brand,” she says. Goldstein says the campaign has enabled CSAA to capture consumers’ attention-no small feat in the highly competitive insurance industry. People don’t expect a 100-year-old company to use QR codes, or to reference an internet meme.” “By Rickrolling consumers, we were able to contemporize the brand in an engaging and surprising way. “The words of this song bring our brand purpose to life in a way that we couldn’t articulate better if we tried,” says Linda Goldstein, CMO of CSAA, which provides auto, homeowners, and other personal insurance to AAA members. Ads featuring the QR codes ran on TV, online, and in outdoor placements, propelling the 60-second video to more than 5 million views in three months.įor CSAA, the song, the singer, and the unexpectedness of the Rickroll concept perfectly encapsulated the company’s aspirations. In the video, the modern-day Astley performs the song-complete with his signature toe taps, finger snaps, retro sunglasses, and trench coat-in a fictional CSAA office filled with employees dancing in white polos and khakis. "It's literally history because nobody's ever done it before.This summer, CSAA Insurance Group took the surprise and delight of the Rickroll to a new level, with simple ads featuring just a QR code-topped by an undulating red hairline-that led viewers to a frame-by-frame recreation of the original music video. "I didn't think that they would go for it because it really is like an entire day of setup and an incredible amount of logistics and trailers and putting all the little drones in the field but they actually agreed to it and the rest is history," Guynes says. The hits increased exponentially as videos of the drone display started to make the rounds on social media. It's not known exactly how many people saw the drones in the sky but Ward says they tracked "a couple hundred" scans of the QR code on the night of the flight. "We had a client the other day and we turned around four custom animations for them." "We're used to working with tight time frames," Ward says. Sky Elements has done sky drone designs for NASCAR events and Reunion Tower at New Year's Eve and is also working on displays for Oakland A's and Kansas City Royal's games. Ward says they only had a short window to prep the drones and animate the light display but that's typical for these kinds of projects. "The one thing about drone shows is they may look small," Ward says, "but when you see them and the scale, you go, 'Whoa, that's really big.'" The 100-foot wide, 250-foot tall QR code hovered over Love Field for approximately 20 minutes on Friday night. Ward says they used 300 drones each with a GPS tracking system and a high-powered LEDs capable to shining at a rate of 1,000 lumens. "When I realized that drone technology had progressed to the point where they had enough to make a scannable QR code in the sky, it sort of came to me all at once that it would be possible to program QR code to literally Rick roll somebody from the air," Guynes says. Guynes texted his idea to Ward saying, "You will be the first company on Earth to 'Rick roll' someone with drones." "We just did a QR code on the at South By Southwest in Austin and he suggested we Rick roll everybody." "We were thinking about something we could do for April Fools, and we were talking to Jared," Ward says. Guynes is the spiky haired guy behind ambitious attractions such as the Vanilla Ice and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reunion show in 2014 and Jared's Epic Nerf Battle at AT&T Stadium, which is now an annual event. Sky Elements Drone Shows found a way to Rick roll a sizable portion of the city for April Fools' Day with 300 of its customizable drones by forming a QR code in the sky that linked to Astley's music Drone QR code in the Dallas, TX sky line! #aprilfools #rickroll #dallas #drone ♬ original sound - Cody Gohlke Preston Ward, the chief pilot and general counsel for Sky Elements Drone Shows, says the idea for the prank came from marketing guru and ideas guy Jared Guynes a couple of weeks before April 1. The term refers to an online prank in which the "Rick rollee" receives a URL address and it leads them to the music video for singer Rick Astley's hit debut single "Never Gonna Give You Up." The opening synthed "doo-de-doo-doo-doo-doo" has created more grins and eye rolls than when the song scored an ungodly amount of airplay in 1987. Internet fads come and go faster than a hiccup, but one that's somehow lasted almost as long as the internet itself is the "Rick roll."
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