Stealing attention on social is tougher now than it’s ever been which is why good creative that people actually react to is more important than ever before.

Branded content tends to be either too obvious in selling products or so determined to not be an ad that it makes it makes little sense at all. This is a minute-long eulogy to the new ŠKODA Fabia, presented in a way that makes the viewer experience something totally unexpected. It hits the sweet spot between ‘ad’ and 'content', rewarding the viewer enough to make them watch it again and, importantly, share it.

The new ŠKODA Fabia was being positioned globally as having 'Attention Stealing Design'. But rather than simply tell people that’s what it does, we knew we had to prove it.

The idea is a short film in which the viewer notices nothing but the sleek, stylish car. Not even a total change of background scene. Sounds impossible, right? Watch it. You’ll be surprised.

Creating something entertaining was part one, deciding who we should push it to was part two. We nailed our target audiences using existing and aspirational customer profiling, layered with Acxiom data, to make sure we only targeted people we knew might genuinely like the new Fabia.

We later targeted users who had watched more than 50% of the film with a Direct Response ad on their newsfeed, inviting them to download a brochure or take a test drive.

It’s safe to say people “loved the advert!” With many commenting that it was “awesome”, “the best advert I’ve seen” and “perfectly executed”. The monkey on the roof was a particular hit with those keen-eyed enough to spot him. Did you?

We generated over 4 million impressions on Facebook alone, with 1.6 million people watching the entire video. And the views weren’t just for a couple of seconds – the average watch time was 39 seconds.

The push on Facebook led to a viral effect and the film went global. 4 million impressions turned into 24 million web impressions worldwide.

We generated 4,793,807 views on YouTube. And the film was voted Campaign’s ‘Ad of the week’ and Ad Week’s ‘Top 5 ads of the week’.