When Subaru asked us to launch their race-inspired WRX and WRX STI sports cars— definitely the black sheep of the utilitarian Subaru family—they were nervous about a spate of negative rumors surrounding the performance of the new cars. Subaru also didn't feel they could defend the car without seeming both defensive and self-serving. We needed a way to open our target to the truth about the cars. So, rather than a traditional ad campaign, we convinced them to form an entirely new company, DoubleURXXX Productions, that could counter these rumors and be free to create riskier and grittier content that lived outside the typical brand voice and would appeal to our more irreverent, adventurous and aggressive target audience. The Chosen Ones, a 17-minute documentary, and The Ride of Her Life, a long-form movie trailer, were our first productions, and they featured Subarus without being produced by Subaru.

Without any advertising, we formed DoubleURXXX, leaked its existence in online forums and let our target discover the site and our explosion-filled mission statement. “No way could this come from Subaru” was their verdict. Perfect. We then launched two productions: The Chosen Ones, a 17-minute documentary detailing our subversive competition to find the five most qualified drivers in America, who we would unknowingly arm with the facts about the car (and share with the world); and The Ride of Her Life, our grindhouse-inspired film featuring three things our target audience loved: hot car, hotter girl and Bucky Lasek.

Almost immediately upon under-the-radar introduction of DoubleURXXX Productions in the forums, our target crowd embraced us as one of their own, with shared irreverent sensibilities and high-octane approaches to the world. Between our two productions, The Chosen Ones and The Ride of Her Life, the work earned over 400,000,000 earned impressions, millions of hits on YouTube and, most impressive of all, changed the conversation on the web and resulted in one the most successful launches in Subaru history with sales up over 400 percent over the last model.