Hasta La Creative!

In case you missed it, Deutsch LA gets credit for dropping a Grammys first last night: an ad that wasn’t quite an ad at all.

The agency gave followers some context before the event:

Tonight, @Target gives fans #MoreMusic w a live commercial performance during the #GRAMMYs feat. @ImagineDragons. Proud 2 partner w them!

— DeutschInc (@DeutschInc) February 8, 2015

 …and one viewer definitely gets it:

Deutsch does it again. Instead of commercials, how about #MoreMusic ? @Target #GRAMMYs — Jasmine (@yaz_jazz) February 9, 2015

The Deutsch creative team got a bit less credit than usual for this campaign, which the release describes as “a collaboration between Target, Imagine Dragons, director Jonas Akerlund, Deutsch LA, Haworth, Grammy Network CBS, Target’s social-media partner Carrot Creative and PR partner Rogers & Cowan.”

As we now know, the move posed something of a risk for Target, which paid $8 million to buy an entire commercial break for the campaign. Here’s one of Carrot’s teasers:

.@ImagineDragons is taking this stage during a special #GRAMMYs commercial break, tonight. Tune in for #MoreMusic. pic.twitter.com/moVgFTWuKj

— Target (@Target) February 8, 2015

Since the ad simply featured the band playing a song, any judgement of its aesthetic merits will be closely tied to one’s opinion of the band in question. But the campaign did link directly to the client’s retail initiative involving a product that will only be available at Target:

Love what you heard from @ImagineDragons? Preorder now & get #MoreMusic when it drops Feb 17. http://t.co/0VWleyAe1epic.twitter.com/2qFxVh1oBR — Target (@Target) February 9, 2015

The meaning of the #MoreMusic tag was twofold, then: viewers got more music during the Grammys broadcast thanks to Target’s ad spend and consumers will also get more music when they buy the album from Target. Observers, however, couldn’t seem to agree on how to classify this project:

That @Target ad w/ @Imaginedragons is homerun of content marketing. Live? Cajones. Ads that try to add to the content, instead of leaching. — Bill Werde (@bwerde) February 9, 2015

This @Target#GRAMMYs@Imaginedragons#moremusic interstitial is pretty much the TV version of native advertising. interesting.

— Randall Lane (@RandallLane) February 9, 2015

Was it content marketing or native advertising? And does anyone really care?