This was just a Smart (ho ho) idea, I thought.

To show the acceleration in a Smart car, the clever people at BBDO Germany created a cunning stunt at the Frankfurt Motor Show for the 520,000 people who visit the city of the vehicular extravaganza.

Creating a game of Pong (because retro-gaming is as big in Germany as it is here, it would appear) where the cars are the controllers: 

Why does it work?

Because it’s simple first and foremost; the game’s simple, the tactic is simple, the participation is simple.

Because it gets the message across; that this is a car where the acceleration (backwards and forwards) is better than the average super-mini. There are far too many stunts that make you wonder where the message went these days. This one bangs it home

Because it’s a live action that gets people talking, but has enough balls about it to get the media talking – delivering editorial eyeballs to an experiential activity.

But the thing that caught my eye is that it’s another example of an ad-agency getting braver about the ideas it suggests.

Normally, if you’re an ad man, your ROI for spend is going to be based on the media that can be bought against an idea. In essence, will this create enough of a spike in awareness to deliver a spike in sales based on the guaranteed media space we can deliver with bought space?

This campaign doesn’t (I suspect) justify the money spent based on the number of participants or the number of consumers reached.

The only way that it adds up is based on whether or not the idea will generate coverage and WOM (the fundamental difference between an experience or event and a stunt, in my book).

Now BBDO (those who bring us the Doritos campaigns), have a track record in spending money that needs editorial and social media buzz to deliver a return-on-investment.

But the fact that they are coming up with – and selling ideas – that are based on stunt-thinking rather than experiential-thinking is yet more evidence that the big creative agencies are adopting PR thinking when it comes to ideas.

And that, as this shows, they are increasingly getting that thinking right.

James Gordon-MacIntosh is a managing partner at Hope&Glory PR and from time-to-time pens Spinning Around, a blog that he describes as “thinking out loud”