Home and auto insurance advertising is dominated by massive brands that rely on a relentless drumbeat of billion-dollar TV buys. Outspent 50:1 in media dollars, we needed to create something so shareable, the internet would do the work that our media buy could not. So, we tapped the internet’s most famous meme to help.

THE CASE STUDY

We reshot Rick Astley’s iconic Never Gonna Give You Up  music video frame by frame, working with Rick to make sure it maintained the spirit and fun of the original. It resulted in the modern remake the internet never knew it needed. To get the word out? We Rickrolled our audience.

In total, it generated over 700 million US earned media impressions and over 2.2 billion global earned media impressions, transforming a $540,000 media buy into $36 million of earned media in the first week alone—a 65X return. 

206,000 QR scans from local media placements exploded into +100 million organic views as people shared and reposted.