An electrifying love story - Smart | Clapboard Ad Archive

Smart’s collaboration with the irreverent fashion designer Jeremy Scott found its boldest public expression with An electrifying love story, a high-voltage ambient campaign produced by Youville and staged at the Grand Prix du Canada in Montreal in Year: 2013. At a time when automotive brands were reaching for new dimensions of style and innovation, Youville’s approach stood apart by fusing automotive design with avant-garde performance art, centering the story around the Smart forjeremy — a limited edition vehicle that channeled Scott’s signature flamboyance and creativity. The campaign’s defining moment came with a visceral live act from Lords of Lightning, an artist duo renowned for their spectacular command of electricity onscreen, who transformed Peel Street into a charged theatre of sparks and spectacle. This partnership acted as a potent visual metaphor, dramatizing the campaign’s core narrative: the electrifying synergy that springs from inspired creative collaboration — in this case, between an iconic city car and a designer who remixes convention. What Clapboard’s taxonomy would classify as FORMAT#9—Symbolize the Benefit, the work foregrounds symbols over exposition, with the raw, visible electricity in the Lords of Lightning show standing in for the literal and figurative energy flowing through both the Smart forjeremy’s electric drivetrain and its couture-inspired styling. Rather than leaning on functional demonstrations or rational messaging, the campaign transforms the public stage of the Grand Prix du Canada from a backdrop into an immersive brand theatre, using the occasion’s high wattage social energy to amplify the car’s positioning as a style-forward statement for urban drivers who crave more than mere transportation. Inserted strategically amidst the festival’s dense traffic of brands and events, the campaign cut through with a blend of wonder and provocation, capturing urban attention not through sheer media weight but experiential drama and memorable, media-friendly visuals — a tactic well-suited to the global surge in ambient and experiential marketing in the early 2010s. The single media asset, a compelling event video, distilled the dramatics of the live performance, ensuring that the campaign’s impact would extend beyond the ephemeral festival moment and into brand narrative. The campaign earns 63/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. For the automotive category, An electrifying love story signals the possibilities unleashed when brands invest in symbolic storytelling and high-concept performance, rather than relying solely on product demonstration or lifestyle cliche.