Belly bumps and high fives fly in this award-winning music video.
A music video?
by Rusty Duncan
Yeah. Why not? I mean, it’s a car dealership. In Okarche, America. Population 1,345. Why wouldn’t we take a popular country-poppy-dude-bro-song and change the words? The fact that doing this makes zero sense is actually why it makes perfect sense for Carter Chevrolet. A statement only White Goodman would be proud of.
Ok, back to the music video thing. How did this happen? Why did it happen? Both are great, yet similar questions. Go back a few months with me. It was a typical Monday morning in early June. Birds barking, dogs chirping and ICG content manager Lisha Dunlap was sitting at her desk, possibly nursing a hangover from the weekend, possibly not? You know, typical early week stuff. I was passing through the hive heading towards the kitchen to grab a Diet Coke (number 2 for the day) when Lisha excitedly called me over to her desk. I happy bossed (fake smiled) my way over there as she pointed to her laptop screen strategically placed next to her Bret Michaels picture and went right into saying, “This would be hilarious if we did a music video for Carter like this FGL one.” She was full screen with the “This is how we roll” video from Florida Georgia Line featuring Luke Bryan.
As I watched this pyro inspired, motorcycle riding, light-leaking party of a music video, two distinct things went through my head. One. How are Luke Bryan’s teeth so freaking white? Seriously, they are almost too white. Two—this is a fantastic idea! Yup. Fantastic idea. All credit to Lisha for this awesome idea! Slow clap into a fast one. So, a few minutes have passed, and I’m 100% convinced we should do this. The time is now 9:20 a.m., and we needed to gauge the client’s interest. I wasted no time to put an amazingly detailed concept brief in email and send to Jason at Carter. Email proof below.
As you can see, it took some convincing—but we got his buy in. On a related note, I will be holding a “how to sell your client big ideas” seminar in the very near future. Seriously though, he was on board and so the real work began.
The Lyrics
This is not the first time I’ve done something like this. I have a rich, undocumented history of changing the lyrics of songs to bring joy/annoy a family member, friend or work colleague. With this, we can annoy/bring joy to all kinds of people. There is really only one way to take on a lyric writing parody project, and that is to listen to the original song over and over again. Then add a few more overs and you will loathe FGL for the rest of your days. Joking. I’m not to that point yet. Those bastards are way too catchy and collab with everyone. It was actually a lot of fun fitting Carter into this song. I just wished I could have worked in sales guy in shorts and some beards references. Oh well, there’s always the next one.
The Music
We have one guy who we call to help make our musical ideas come to life, and that guy is Erick Alexander. He is so freaking talented, and we love to bring him on projects. He created the sound-alike music and sang the vocals for the song. If you ever need custom music, hit Erick up.
Behind the Scenes
