Car insur­ance and com­par­i­son web­site brand Mon­ey­Su­per­Mar­ket have mod­i­fied a BMW i3 so it can be dri­ven by a person’s brain­waves. The stunt both encour­ages dri­vers to “use their heads” while dri­ving, or shop­ping for insur­ance pre­mi­ums, and also rais­es aware­ness of the grow­ing use of “telem­at­ics” by car insur­ance providers.

Mon­ey­Su­per­Mar­ket has nev­er been shy when it comes to pulling off “epic” stunts. In Octo­ber, their Epic Car Crush­er gave con­sumers the chance to smash up a car with a giant robot­ic hand.

Now the insur­ance com­par­i­son brand is giv­ing con­sumer the chance to dri­ve a BMW i3 with only the pow­er of their minds. Hav­ing mod­i­fied the vehi­cle with a mechan­i­cal rig, which can both steer and con­trol the ped­als, the car is then hooked up to a person’s mind using a elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy (EEG) neu­ro head­set.

The tech­nol­o­gy is, in MoneySuperMarket’s words, “in cel­e­bra­tion of savvy savers who use their heads and save mon­ey on their car insur­ance.”

“Dri­ver­less cars are cur­rent­ly being road test­ed but until they’re an every­day real­i­ty, we know it’s as impor­tant as ever for motorists to use their heads while dri­ving,” said David Har­ling, dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing direc­tor at Mon­ey­Su­per­Mar­ket, in an inter­view with The Dai­ly Mail.

Kick­ing off the cam­paign, the brand enlist­ed Car­ol Vor­der­man to take the mind-con­trolled vehi­cle for an inau­gur­al spin.

The tech­nol­o­gy that pow­ers Epic Mind Dri­ve was revealed in an accom­pa­ny­ing video released on MoneySuperMarket’s YouTube chan­nel.

Just like Epic Car Crush­er, the cam­paign is run­ning in tan­dem with the launch of a mobile app game, Epic Mind Dri­ve Track. The game pits peo­ple against one anoth­er in a race con­trolled by their facial expres­sions.

Multi-Channel & Integrated Campaigns

The online com­par­i­son and insur­ance indus­try is a fierce­ly con­test­ed mar­ket, and one where top-of-mind aware­ness is key. What’s espe­cial­ly potent about MoneySuperMarket’s lat­est cam­paign, and the ones before that, is how well they per­form across chan­nels.

For exam­ple, Epic Mind Dri­ve has amassed thou­sands of shares on social media in just a mat­ter of days, the major­i­ty of which were shared via Face­book.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, MoneySuperMarket’s Epic Strut was pro­mot­ed as both a high-pro­file tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing cam­paign, and on dig­i­tal video plat­forms where it quick­ly went viral. Inter­est­ing­ly, for some com­men­ta­tors, the video ignit­ed a mod­ern gen­der debate which caused many to voice their opin­ions on social media, cre­at­ing addi­tion­al cov­er­age.

The cam­paigns also win a great deal of press cov­er­age, and in the UK mar­ket Mon­ey­Su­per­Mar­ket caters for, the stunts also gen­er­ate word-of-mouth aware­ness. Nat­u­ral­ly, the win­ner of #EPIC­Mind­Drive, who will get to put his head behind the mod­i­fied BMW i3, also took to twit­ter to announce his luck with a cel­e­bra­to­ry tweet.

Capturing A Moment

While one of the under­ly­ing mes­sages of the cam­paign was to encour­age con­sumers to “use their heads” when shop­ping for car insur­ance, anoth­er was to raise aware­ness about the increas­ing use of telem­at­ics by insur­ers to offer low­er pre­mi­ums.

Essen­tial­ly a black box that trans­mits GPS data, inform­ing insur­ers about how safe a dri­ver is on the roads, telem­at­ics offer a way for con­sumers to obtain a reduced quote. The tech­nol­o­gy has yet to gain wide­spread use, but in recent months major car insur­ance providers have shown signs of pay­ing increas­ing notice to the tech­nol­o­gy.

MoneySuperMarket’s cam­paign has won the brand a lot of atten­tion. By run­ning a cam­paign that puts forth a strong under­ly­ing mes­sage while also draw­ing con­sumers’ atten­tion to pro­gres­sive tech­nol­o­gy that could help them save mon­ey in future years, the brand has placed itself well in their sec­tor, win­ning valu­able top-of-mind aware­ness and brand equi­ty.

What exam­ples have you seen recent­ly of brands seiz­ing the moment?