Bastion Aotearoa has taken an unconventional approach to selling cars, teaming up with filmmaker Taika Waititi to turn Zeekr’s new 7X into the centrepiece of an art-led campaign.
Dubbed ‘Spotlight’, the campaign sees Waititi use the EV as a creative device. The result is seven frames, each illuminated by the Zeekr 7X’s headlights, spanning an alien visitation, paparazzi frenzy, sunbathing and more.
The campaign has being brought to life through photography, out-of-home, social content, making-of films and a public exhibition in Auckland.
Speaking exclusively to B&T, Bastion Aotearoa chief creative officer Oli Green said the collaboration was deliberately structured around giving Waititi the creative freedom to find a way to make car advertising that excited him.
For Green, the partnership also provided a way to connect Zeekr’s brand positioning with Waititi’s creative identity, through what the team described as a “lane of one”.
“Zeekr, a brand that lives in a lane of one. Taika, a creator that lives in a lane of one. And we thought this could be a bridging piece of language that we could use to to to bring that together,” he said.
That thinking ultimately led Bastion to what Green describes as an “art-vertising” approach, deliberately pushing ‘Spotlight’ away from the conventions of automotive advertising.
“It is intriguing, unexplained and symptomatically closer to art than advertising,” he said.
Rather than asking audiences to understand the product, the campaign was designed to make them stop, look and interpret what they are seeing first.
For Green, that distinction matters in a media environment where brands are no longer competing for attention solely against other ads.
“Advertisers get confused. They think that their competition for attention is other ads. It’s not other ads. It is everything in a consumer’s media diet.”
The ambition, he said, is for the work to feel less like something interrupting a consumer’s feed and more like something they actually want to engage with.
“I think every advertiser’s goal should be to become reference for someone else.”
That is a major departure from the traditional automotive approach, where campaigns exists to demonstrate a vehicle’s features, performance capabilities or value.
‘Spotlight’ largely strips those rational selling points away. The Zeekr 7X is instead treated as a luxury object and a storytelling device, with the headlights providing the creative foundation for the stills.
Green said the approach reflected the way premium products are able to be marketed beyond a purely functional proposition.
“What we we punched for here is what if this was treated like a luxury good, as much as it was treated like an automobile?”
The result is a campaign that has asked consumers to engage with the brand through emotion and interpretation first, before they are given the more rational cues to consider the product.
“What builds brands is irrationality, emotion, those things that you can’t quite describe or you don’t really feel like you want to describe.”
That art-led approach was also reflected in how the campaign was physically produced. The Bastion team went into Waititi’s West Auckland studio and suspended the Zeekr 7X from a crane, to capture the stills.
For Green, that level of physical craft held its own value in an era when AI has made elaborate imagery increasingly easier to produce.
“Difficult is worth doing, and difficult is how you show your customers that you care about them. Craft is how you show people you care about them.”
The campaign began in New Zealand, with the Australian market subsequently joining the project.
For now, ‘Spotlight’ is best understood as Bastion’s attempt to make a car campaign that audiences engage with on different terms. And that, is where Green sees the opportunity for “art-vertising”.
‘Spotlight’ runs at Studio 230 in Ponsonby, Auckland from 17-20 September, with the full collection available globally from 21 September.
CREDITS
Client: Zeekr / NordEast Group
Creative & PR Agency: Bastion Aotearoa
Chief Creative Officer: Oli Green
Creative: Dom Antelme
Managing Director Creative: Luke Farmer
Client Partner: Olwen Hopley
Strategy: Ryan Jordan
Production: Pip Mayne
Managing Director Communications &Experience: Joanna James
PR & Experiential: Paige Corrin
Photographer / Director: Taika Waititi
Production Studio: Studio West
