The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2022
Prime Video turns Waze's voice navigation into the go-fast chase of film 'Overdose'
For the launch of 'Overdose', Prime Video recast Waze's spoken directions with the film's actors, so your own drive becomes the drug convoy.
Prime Video
What it had to solve
Overdose is Prime Video's French blockbuster about the 'go fast' — convoys of powerful cars smuggling drugs into France from Spain, led by a scout car that reports hazards such as the police. The launch had to drop audiences inside that chase rather than describe it.
How it works
Overdose, Prime Video's French action blockbuster, is about a 'go fast': drug traffickers smuggle goods into France from Spain in convoys of powerful cars led by a scout car that reports hazards such as the police. For the film's release, the launch idea was to make that chase tangible outside the screen.
The answer was Overwaze, an immersive experience created in partnership with Waze. Instead of placing an ad next to the app, Prime Video recast the app itself: Waze's familiar spoken navigation was re-performed by actors from the film, so directions and police warnings sounded like a scout crew guiding the driver through a go fast.
A drive that millions already made every day became the setting of the movie, with no extra screen required. D&AD keeps the work in its awards archive, filed among its Radio & Audio entries, and the page records no reach figures.
Why it lands
- Waze navigation is the one audio channel drivers already attend to, so the film reached them at a moment of full attention.
- The go fast is a driving story, which makes the navigation app a native setting rather than a forced placement.
- Re-voicing the app let the film's characters enter daily life instead of asking audiences to leave it for a screen.
- Every guided route doubled as a demonstration of the film's premise, so the promotion and the product were the same experience.
What it did
The release itself became the advertisement: driving with Waze during the launch turned a journey the audience already made into an encounter with the film's world. D&AD keeps Overwaze in its awards archive, filed among its Radio & Audio entries; the page records no reach figures.
What you can take
Borrow a utility people already use and recast its voice with the story's characters: the campaign does not interrupt the journey — it becomes the journey.
Since then
D&AD keeps Overwaze in its awards archive and the page records no follow-up figures, so the case stands on the mechanism: a streaming release borrowed the voice of an everyday utility to put audiences inside the film's chase. The transferable move is to find the channel where the audience is already performing the story's activity — here, driving — and rewrite that channel with the story's voice.
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