Subaru wants to hear your First Car Story
The new website, FirstCarStory.com, allows people to showcase the story of their first car. Subaru features a groundbreaking animation generator that allows users to recreate the story. You tell the website your first car story and the software picks out specific words or you choose which words to highlight. It utilizes pioneering text-to-video technology, it will turn your words and phrases into custom animations. Pretty cool!
The experience begins when you land on the home page. You will find the car generator allowing you to find a shape and style of car that fit the first car you owned and drove. The website allows you to choose different colors and different degrees of condition. If your car was in amazing shape you can show that, if it was a jalopy you can show that too.
Next the you cruise over to the story entry page to tell their story through text. The animation generator tool isolates key words to begin populating visuals that bring the story to life. Users can also select key words and phrases to highlight in their story that they feel will most help in generating an accurate animation of their first car story.
A storyteller can then take the driver's seat and record a personal, vocal narrative to accompany the animation. Before publishing, the storyteller selects an appropriate soundtrack to complete the personalization of their video. A range of musical styles and songs are available and people should find something to their liking or what fits their first car story. The narration and music give more pizzaz and zest to the story.
The storyteller is also able to tag Facebook friends to include in the video. Once completed, the storyteller then can share and publish their directorial debut across wide array of social media platforms.
After you are all done sharing and showcasing your story, you can see other first car stories. The user community will show what other people's first cars were like, and you can compare great stories, or laugh at horror stories.
"Everyone loved their first car, no matter how bad, beat up, or borrowed. That first car became a new chapter in life or a ticket to freedom and first car stories are often the most memorable stories we have," said Alan Bethke, director, marketing communications for Subaru of America. "The First Car Story campaign provides a creative outlet for reliving those unique, funny, unforgettable car experiences anyone who had a first car can relate to."
I tested out the website and told the story of my first car (a '96 Honda Accord). I found the car generator a lot of fun to play with. Writing about the car did bring back found memories of when I drove across country with it. (I currently still own it and it runs strong!) I definitely recommend you test out the website.
I should note you need to provide your Facebook profile information or name and email. Subaru has obviously not missed out on the chance to tell you information about the all new 2012 Subaru Impreza on the website by the way. Of course the new Subaru Impreza is a great car and I don't think there's anything wrong with that since Subaru built the website.
This new social media campaign is a great idea from the inventive minds at Subaru. Who doesn't have found memories of their first car? Pretty much nobody, even if it was piece of junk.