Hasta La Creative!

The United States Marine Corps has been defined by their fighting spirit for 243 years. But for today’s youth who are ambivalent about the military, the question is which battles today are worth fighting? As technology and media have changed consumption habits and limited the effects of advertising, the Marines enlisted the help of those voices most prevalent in their lives today—YouTube content creators—to help answer that question.

This unique program developed from a need to reach the youth audience that spends most of their time on YouTube, and share the story of how Marines are trained to overcome any challenge. The Marine Corps created a 3 day version of their legendary boot camp, set at Parris Island, South Carolina, and challenged 4 content creators to make it through the entire 3 days. The moment the creators set foot on the island they were met by their drill instructors and escorted through a grueling schedule of activities that included all of the most feared recruit training challenges: the Confidence Course, the Rappel Tower, the Gas Chamber and the Crucible Hike.

Each creator told their own story of their time on the island and shared the videos with their YouTube followers. The authenticity of their experience – including the reality that not everyone makes it through Marine Corps recruit training, as demonstrated by the fact that one creator quit mid-program – plus the quality of their storytelling led to a phenomenal 159 mm organic impressions within the first month alone, as well as 6.5 mm views across all of the videos.

Despite what the competition say, all power’s the same, none of it is super. While they all dress it up and try and pretend it’s different, or flog you something else as well to make you think you’ve got a deal, but you don’t.

Energy Online tell it how it is and deliver what people want. Which is this case is just energy, at a fair price, that’s easy to get. That’s not what most in the market are up to, so we decided it was time to call BS, cause power just isn’t super.

This stunt, the first of three in our campaign, was created using real people. Over a month they were screened and tested, so they arrived at our ‘Energy Online sponsored University technology prototype test,’ believing they were on the brink of creating history. Instead, they helped prove a point – power, is power, is power, it’s all the same. But it can be brilliantly simple.