The Chevrolet Groove faced substantial challenges when it launched in 2021:

As a new vehicle, it had no nameplate recognition whatsoever.

It was being targeted to a new audience for our brand – young, lifestyle-oriented drivers on a budget.

It launched at a time when automotive marketing budgets were at their lowest and consumers weren’t making big purchases.

This younger audience want a vehicle that reflects and enhances their youthful lifestyle. Our brief was to make Groove the obvious choice for them.

Realizing this young audience listens to more music than any other demographic, we identified this as a key avenue to connect with them on their level. We realized they felt underrepresented in a market saturated by western music and older, more traditional Arab music.

We wanted to address this need in a way nobody would ever expect from a car brand.

We created ME-Pop, a new genre of music that gave Arab millennials the authentic representation they’d been craving. Our regional equivalent to Korea’s K-Pop and Japan’s J-Pop.

With Middle Eastern charts dominated by Western and older, traditional Arab music, we brought together diverse young artists from across the Middle East to create a sound that’s both authentic to the region and relatable to the audience.

Working with the region’s leading music producers and talent managers, we selected artists with different backgrounds, styles, dialects and influences, and paired them together to create an album of unique, original tracks. We made sure to represent women, youth and diverse nationalities, all of which were underrepresented until now.

Our brief to them was simple: Create collaboratively in a way that’s authentic to each of you as individuals. This is the heart of ME-Pop – uniting the diverse sounds and styles of the Middle East.

We focused our campaign on the music platforms our audience listened to most. Choosing not to spend a single cent on radio plays, we instead targeted people actively searching for new music and better artist representation, and relied on ME-Pop being featured on regional ‘new music’ playlists across Spotify, Apple Music, Anghami, Deezer and YouTube.

This authentic approach ensured we would reach those who were seeking the original diversity that ME-Pop was offering, as opposed to a more typical advertising approach which would push our music to a wider base with significantly more paid media dollars.

We worked closely with our artists to define ME-Pop’s signature sound, ensuring we authentically reflected Arab millennials while offering them something new.

Every track mentioned ‘Groove’ or ‘Chevrolet’ within the lyrics – building on Chevy’s musical legacy, built over decades by popular artists. This allowed us to seamlessly integrate our product and connect the brand to the excitement created by ME-Pop.

Adopting the same approach taken by mainstream artists, we teased and dropped two hit singles online to build listener appetites, ahead of releasing the full album.

Our first single and hero track, ‘Balash Ana’, featured stylish Saudi pop artist Carmen Soliman, and up-and-coming Bahraini hip-hop artist Flipperachi. Building on its success, we featured it across our TikTok-esque social content. Professional dancers moved to the music in and around the Groove, highlighting the car’s features using modern choreography and trending transitions and editing styles that fit right in on social.

Groove sold out across the region.

Extensive media coverage of ME-Pop.

More than 12,000 organic videos featuring ME-Pop tracks created on TikTok.

More than 45 million song plays, in a total of 52 different countries around the world.

ME-Pop even reached 4-time Grammy-winner, Timbaland, who heard and loved our third track, ‘Chokran’ sharing both the song and his reaction organically on his Instagram.