You may not have known that shipping containers can dance.
To promote GE Transportation, agency The Barbarian Group teamed up with Reuben Wu of British electronic band Ladytron to create a song and video featuring the company's intermodal products—which help choreograph millions of containers of freight being carried by railroads, trucks and boats—at work at the CSX Intermodal Terminal in North Baltimore, Ohio. Wu recorded some of the sounds in the song at the terminal itself, a trick we've already seen applied to athletes by brands like Gillette and Coca-Cola. The GE video, part of its "Brilliant Machines" campaign, though, is basically industrial-grade technophilia, struggling to make freight logistics anything but incredibly boring. At its heart, the idea is a little silly, but the result itself actually ends up being pretty hypnotizing.
It's especially nice given the subject matter. Creating any kind of emotional connection to complex, dull-at-first-blush technology is a perennial problem for GE. This, at least, creates some interest. But its got some pretty stiff competition in machines you didn't know were powered by GE—especially Marty McFly's DeLorean.
