Seattle is somewhat famous for a few things — Bill Gates, Pike Place, Starbucks. But it’s absolutely legendary for one thing: being the home of progressive music.

We thought about simply sharing a Spotify playlist celebrating the legends of the Seattle scene. But we needed a fresher, louder story. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s the unexpected ways in which a great story supercharges a good plan.

We already had ‘a good plan’: announcing a new route by distributing information to your customers through your owned channels – say, an email pointing to a web page filled with detail about the new route, timetables, flight duration, why it’s better to fly direct; and some social content, including 10 reasons to visit Seattle, and some beauty shots of the cabin experience… we did all that. Nice stuff. Solid traffic. No complaints. But I don’t live for no complaints. No complaints means not interesting; not interesting means no brand recognition. This is after all a Singapore Airlines story, not just a Seattle story.

The idea here was to trigger interest above all that information, by bringing Seattle and Singapore Airlines together — and showing off both products in a new, and striking way.

Now, gaining access to pretty much any Airbus A350 takes a huge amount of effort. Gaining access to one that belongs to the world's most-awarded airline, then hitting it with sticks: that’s another story altogether. (They're understandably pretty precious about their planes.)

Kudos to our brave client team at SIA who did a huge amount of work to help bring Chong the Nomad from her native Seattle, to Singapore, and let her turn an entire Singapore Airlines A350 into one giant musical instrument – while making a really watchable piece of film to go with the new track.

Listen on Spotify.

Update: well over 15 million aggregate views as of early 2020; Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, online at singaporeair.com, and in paid placements around the world.

Update: Editor's Pick over at AdAge!