Škoda Spain And Proximity Barcelona Latest Campaign “The Desert Cowboys”
The spot was produced by Lobo Kane.
In 2015, ŠKODA Spain and Proximity Barcelona launched a social project focused on mobility with their Cannes Lions award-winning “70 Guardians of Winter” campaign. “The Desert Cowboys” is the second instalment of the brand’s initiative to halt isolation, cementing its commitment to combating the serious issue affecting Spain.
This time, ŠKODA has chosen to help the villages of the Tabernas Desert (Almería, southeastern Spain), a region that became famous in its heyday as a location for filming spaghetti westerns – a glamorous past that contrasts starkly with its present day situation.
“The Desert Cowboys” is a series of branded content videos– paying homage to the region’s glorious past and explaining its current problem with isolation – with the aim of generating public support for creating a 21st century stagecoach service to reconnect the desert’s villages.
The project aims to extend its scope far beyond Almería and Spain, as its end goal is to make people aware of the global problem of isolation in rural areas, an issue that affects thousands of villages all over the world. An English version of the project has also been developed and will be launched across the Czech brand’s various markets.
The spot was produced by Lobo Kane.
Eva Santos, Creative Director at Proximity adds, “With this campaign, ŠKODA wanted to help, and pay tribute to, the people who live in a place that was, in its day, a key factor in the western film industry, and which brought a lot of glamour, tourism and business to Spain, and to help them with their problems with transport and isolation. What if “The Desert Cowboys”, succeeds in making the genre popular again, and film makers come back to check out these legendary film sets? There’s a famous quote from “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” that goes “There are two kinds of people in the world, my friend. Those who have a rope around their neck and those who have the job of doing the cutting”. It expresses the idea behind the campaign perfectly; ŠKODA wants to take the initiative and cut the rope before it is too late.
