It’s been four years since its last television ad aired, but now Gap is debuting a brand new series of commercials, backed by a digital blitz.
The new campaign, titled “Back To Blue” features two videos of acoustic musical performances from the offspring of famous musicians, including Dhani Harrison, (son of George Harrison of The Beatles) and Alexa Ray Joel, (daughter of Billy Joel. )
Harrison (who really does look exactly like his father did at that age) performs “For You Blue,” from The Beatles’ album Let It Be, while Joel performs her father’s hit “Just The Way You Are.”
Gap will become one of the first high-profile brands to make use of Twitter’s television ad targeting service, which sends out promoted messages to users who tweet about the shows during which its commercial airs.
For example, if Gap airs its commercials during Monday Night Football, it will follow up with promoted tweets to anyone who is tweeting about Monday Night Football, since this will be the audience that is most likely to have seen its commercial. It’s an effective one-two punch strategy, capitalizing on the brand exposure from the TV ad with a targeted follow up message.
“While TV still reaches many people at the same time, it’s the power of social conversations that turn amazing video content from a commercial into an event,” said Gap chief marketing officer Seth Farbman. “By leveraging a platform like Twitter, we’re able to broaden and deepen the emotional power of Back to Blue, long after the spots have stopped airing on the networks.”
In addition to the video content, Gap is investing heavily in digital promotion, mostly through Twitter. Before sending out the targeted ads, It began revealing a series of audio content from both spots through a retweet call-to-action. Once 500 people retweeted a special link from @gap, the audio content and musicians’ names were unlocked.
Once 1,000 people retweet a follow-up tweet from @gap, the full spots will be revealed on Twitter by September 16 at 11:30 a.m. EST and will begin airing on U.S. primetime that same evening.
It’s a high profile campaign that couldn’t have come at a better time for Twitter, as it scrambles to pump up its ad revenue generation ahead of its planned IPO.
Here’s a look at both the TV spots:
