How to Blow Up an Armored Truck in 12 Steps
Looking to pull off a brash PR stunt? Here's how to engineer an explosive marketing campaign in 12 easy steps.
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BLASTOFF. Loaded with mortars, black powder, diesel fuel, and gasoline to create a 70-foot fireball, the armored vehicle rigged by pyrotechnics pros WESTefx flew 20 feet in the air upon detonation.
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DOGG DAY. Rapper/actor Snoop Dogg was hired to detonate the blast in the desert outside of Las Vegas. (Note: Snoop uses repeated expletives in the accompanying video.)
"We blew up a bank one time," David Moranville recounts. "That was almost as cool as when we bulldozed a mall."
Moranville isn't unhinged. He's the creative director and executive vice president of Davis Elen Advertising, a 75-year-old West Coast agency that's known for its unorthodox ideas. Of late, Moranville has been immersed in a campaign for Mafia Wars, a popular social network-based game by Zynga, the hot San Francisco game developer. Davis Elen had been working with Zynga on a few small projects, including some outdoor advertising. When Zynga decided to launch a Las Vegas chapter of Mafia Wars this year, Moranville went all-in. He and his team presented Zynga with more than a dozen marketing campaign ideas.
"We had a big white-board brainstorming meeting over at their office. They wanted to attract new users, but also re-energize the old users who had maybe gone dormant," Moranville says. "Long story short, the comment came out – probably from my mouth – that 'gamers like nothing more than seeing stuff blow up.' That was the concept: Let's just blow shit up."
Well, the concept was a bit more intricate than that, and what started as a simple thought has evolved into a three-tiered campaign that involves an in-game casino-robbery plotline, street teams that included actors in two cities and graffiti-style "wild posting" ads in four metropolitan areas, and a live event in Las Vegas that involved — you guessed it — blowing up an armored truck. Rapper Snoop Dogg set off the explosion on August 19 at 6 p.m., a time that loosely coincided with the signing up of Mafia Wars's 10 millionth user.
We asked Moranville exactly how he went about creating this elaborate pyrotechnic stunt campaign. We've also organized his strategy into steps any aspiring marketing whiz who wants to try blowing up something for publicity can employ.
1. Ask: "Could this actually work?"
If you're in the field of stunt marketing, you must always ask yourself if you can really pull off a plan. Moreover, will the stunt, even if executed flawlessy, be worthwhile? For Davis Elen and Mafia Wars, timing was the biggest logistical concern from the start. Both parties knew integrating the explosion into the online game would spark excitement for existing players, and a real-world spectacle could kindle fresh interest. But would they be able to get a truck, production company, pyrotechnics, permits, and all else done on a short schedule?
"The brainstorm meeting was maybe eight weeks ago," Moranville says. "We knew timing would be the biggest issue from the start, but we went for it. We put all the planning together and the logistics in about four weeks. Then we launched the online tease and video about two weeks ago, and so there's a week left so it's a three-week campaign." Both client and agency took a leap of faith.
2. Shop for a used truck.
Or hire someone else to buy your big wheels. At Davis Elen, Moranville says his creative assistant did all of the preliminary scouting work. And she struck gold: She found a company that buys, sells, and restores armored vehicles. "They do it for sets and such, but also for legitimate money-moving," he says. And the agency learned it was less expensive to work with the armored-truck supplier than to look independently. Another surprise: it was more affordable to buy real, heavy-duty, reinforced armored Dunbar trucks than fakes – or to stage an explosion on a Hollywood set. The agency wound up buying three trucks instead of one – at a price tag of $25,000 each – a fraction of what the company had budgeted. The two trucks that were not to be combusted were turned into roving marketing vehicles as part of an outdoor campaign that hit the streets of New York City and San Francisco. Total cost: $75,000.
3. Scout a location.
The bad news, if you want to put on a brash display of pyrotechnics – especially if the display might, say, resemble a criminal act – is that you can forget about pulling it off in Times Square or on the Las Vegas strip. Even if you've got the funds, getting permits is all-but impossible when you're talking about using such highly trafficked public places.
"If we were to be within the Las Vegas city limits, we would have had to go through the City Council," Moranville said. "There would be a lot more people to organize, if you know what I mean."
Once Moranville realized that his idea of having the Las Vegas strip at least in the background of his explosion shot was all-but impossible, a whole new range of possibilities opened up. That's when his firm discovered Boulder City – a place near Vegas that magician Criss Angel often uses for executing stunts. "Where there's mortars and necessary security, you want to be a place that understands that crazy people are doing something bizarre," Moranville said. Davis Elen's production permit came directly from Boulder City, at a price tag of less than $10,000. What's more, Moranville found a work-around for filming on the strip. The day before the "evidence-destroying" explosion (the video game plot-line involves a gangster and his lady-friend robbing a casino after disguising themselves as security guards and driving a stolen armored van, so what's being staged in the desert is a real-life explosion to mirror the game characters blowing up their getaway van), a video crew filmed actors driving down the strip in one of the display vans. They even got footage of the actors running into and out of a casino. What about permits? "Well, no one told us to leave," Moranville says. Total cost: Less than $10,000.
4. Move all the moving pieces.
"Shipping of the trucks, that was an unexpected expense," Moranville says. "We shipped one to New York for $20,000." Meanwhile, the truck to be annihilated in operation "destroy the evidence" was driven by activation team Makai – another advertising firm, which is based in Los Angeles – to the pyrotechnic offices. Makai, which had also helped find and purchase the vehicles, went about licensing and registering them in California and New York, and making sure the drivers on the street teams were properly licensed and insured. Makai also managed the billboard-style wrapping of the outdoor trucks. Total cost: More than $20,000.
5. Assemble a production crew.
If retaining memory of the event to be staged is important – and with continuing online experiencing of the event being possible, it is – then you'll want to bring in a professional film crew. For filming the explosion, Davis Elen went with a Las Vegas-based production company Fireball. The company managed more than just the filming – it did a lot of the traditional prep-work to securing, setting up, and managing the location of the film shoot. "One of the keys to making this successful is the production team hired someone in Vegas, so we have someone local," Moranville says. "It's always critical to get someone who is local who knows what the red tape is and who to contact."
One limitation to consider: Only about 12 production people could be on hand for the blast, due to the body-count limit imposed by the fire marshals.
