Guitar Center: Hang On To Yourself
Guitar Center is losing customers to e-commerce competitors. They’re also losing them for a deeper reason — people are giving up on their musical dreams. However, they still idolize pop stars – the people who never gave up.
It’s up to us to convince everyone to stay true to themselves. To keep the drive to express themselves through music and realize that dream.
We’ll do this by portraying legendary musicians living out mundane lives. A parade of Dickensian ghosts showing could-have-been timelines.
Art + Copy: Todd Konrad, Casey Burns
OOH: A Life More Ordinary
We launch with an OOH campaign showing our legends in less-than-legendary circumstances.
We feature aspects of their iconography realized in ordinary lives, hinting at the artistic expression inside of them that no one would ever know.
Extension: Celebrity Interview Vinyl LPs / Spotify Albums
We will record a series of excruciatingly boring but ultimately funny spoken-word interview albums with our less-than-legendary variants.
Imagine a Johnny Cash discussing the finer details of tailoring and why he personally enjoys working on black suits.
Ponder a Flavor Flav talking about the differences between wind-up alarm clocks versus battery-powered ones.
We will press and hype a limited number of vinyl LPs and place them in record stores and other retailers (Urban Outfitters and the like) to drive music lovers to Guitar Center.
Spotify will feature the albums so that casual digital listeners can bathe in the boredom of a life without music.
Stunt:
Undercover Celebrity Retailers
Celebrity musicians will pose as everyday retail workers in chain stores across America. When fans recognize and engage with them, the stars will stay in character and act as if they gave up on music.
They converse and engage with fans and ask if they play music. Eventually, they hand them Guitar Center gift cards and point them in the direction of the nearest location to shop for something meaningful.
Fan documentation causes a huge stir online, translating to invaluable user-generated content and a surge in sales at Guitar Center.