In the middle of the pandemic, Chevrolet wanted to be more relevant on social networks as part of a strategy of bringing freshness to the brand. But the brand was still not present on TikTok. So they asked the agency to launch the brand profile by creating a stunt that would be able to gather followers and, more than that, would generate new fans of the brand.

The idea came from the observation of a common behavior among people: every driver drums on the steering wheel i.e. Chevrolet had in their products the most played drum kit in the world. Also it's important to remember that we are in Brazil, the country that invented samba and has the beat running in its veins. So we decided to transform a steering wheel into an actual drum kit with the help of technology (by putting electronic drum sensors inside the steering wheel) and the most prominent drummer in Brazil: the Grammy winner, Oscar nominee, and The Voice's judge - Carlinhos Brown. With the steering drum ready to perform, we asked Carlinhos Brown to create a new beat and challenge people to follow him by using their creativity on TikTok. And it rapidly spread like wildfire.

Having one of the most famous percussion artists in the world combined with the "freshness" factor a new social network such as TikTok was the starting point of the PR strategy: we hired Carlinhos Brown to drum in his steering wheel and challenge other people to do so. After all, with all the carnival and samba roots, Brazilians are one of the most musical people in the world. Other musicians and digital influencers were hired to accept the challenge and keep challenging their fanbases. It grew like a snowball and more and more musicians, influencers and tons of real people, mostly youngsters, joined the challenge with such intensity that in less than 24 hour, Chevrolet Brazil became the most important automotive profile in TikTok Brazil.

We launched Chevrolet's profile on TikTok by posting a short seeding video explaining what we did (the steering drum) and how we did it. At the end of this video, Carlinhos Brown entered and challenged the public to follow his beat (he also posted the video on his social networks which has more than 3MM followers). As the seeding video was spreading, we invited XX smaller influencers to post their beats in a creative way in order to inspire the public along the week. As we can see on results, it was revealed to be the right way to reach and generate new fans of the brand.

The Drum Challenge has reached numbers far beyond the expectations. The campaign generated 94 million views in one month.

Chevrolet went from 0 to 172.000 followers on TikTok in just 24h. It already was more than any other car brand in Brazil. Now they have more than 432.000 followers. In one month, we overtook the automotive segment benchmark in numbers of views and followers. But there is more: the campaign's hashtag has reached 1.2 Billion of views with more than 3.000 videos produced by the public. Engagement rate finished 112% above the initial goal. On Instagram, one post was the most liked among all the brand's content in the last 2 years. It all made Chevrolet the most relevant car brand on TikTok with just 1 post.