GM’s Ultium platform is the lynchpin in its strategy to create a world with zero emissions, designed to easily accommodate a wide range of EV styles and sizes. GM aims to ensure that every individual and community has access to the benefits of the new electric era, which means building EVs for everyone.

However, in the minds of Americans, being sustainable means one of two things: doling out extra cash they don’t have to purchase “green” products or making extreme lifestyle changes that are inconvenient and frivolous. Americans want to be climate supporters but are looking for it to be easy and fun.

To tackle this, our brief was a challenging one: Position GM as a leader in the fight against climate change

Our objective:

- Put GM’s industry leading platform, Ultium, at the forefront of the EV conversation in the fight against climate change.

In a bold move for a conservative corporation, our idea was diabolically good. The infamous Dr. EV-il would take over GM during the Super Bowl and use their proprietary Ultium battery to save the world from climate change. (The world had to survive for Dr. EV-il to (one day) control it…wha-ha-ha, wha-ha-ha-ha!) 

Once we had their attention, Dr. EV-il ran General Motors from the inside out for the next week. He put his face on top of GM’s headquarters tower at the Renaissance Center in Detroit, took over GM’s social media and began recruiting loyal employees on LinkedIn.  

The campaign is based on a key insight: "We are the first generation to feel the effect of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it."

Our target audience was mainstream consumers, as well as policy makers and investors.

Our PR strategy focused on creatively utilizing the cultural capital of Dr. Evil and our celebrity influencers to increase awareness of climate change and of GM’s Ultium battery platform as a strong solution.

We surrounded the Super Bowl spot with earned media stories, unique and tailored social and earned media content, celeb talent’s social channels and more – all of which started a week before the big game.

We created 47 unique assets for earned and social media, including behind-the-scenes content, photos, gifs, and specific videos for each of the celebrities’ channels as well as for six of GM’s social channels and GM.com.

We broke through at the Super Bowl by bringing back Dr. Evil and his team of misfits to save the world from climate change, so they could in turn take over the world. To do this, Dr. Evil first had to take over GM, giving him access to our proprietary Ultium technology.

For the first time ever, a fictional character stole the reins from a real CEO, taking over and running a real global company for a week leading up to the Super bowl. Not only did Dr. Evil take over corporate responsibilities he also took over GM’s social media pages, recruiting new employees on LinkedIn and getting his climate fighting message out there to everybody from musicians and actors to sports teams.

Viewers and fans across the country were so enthralled with Dr. Evil's plan they tuned into the Super Bowl to see what he might do next.

We changed the conversation around climate change and showed the world that GM has the game-changing technology to get everybody in an EV

139M potential viewers heard Dr. Evil admit on live air that climate change was the number one threat to the planet. Earning GM an estimated reach of 20.2M.

His social media takeover garnered 6M impressions across GM corporate owned channels and 81% positive sentiment. Trending nationally on Twitter at #9.

Dr. Evil also piqued interest in GM’s Ultium platform resulting in a 134% increase in traffic to GM.com.