Volvo steals the Super Bowl.

The concept was pure chutzpah. “The moment any car ad shows during the Super Bowl, turn your attention to Volvo.”

Volvo, never one of the noisier brands, wasn’t going to spend $4.5 million on a 30-second Super Bowl ad. Instead Grey New York aimed to steal some of the big spenders’ thunder: during any Super Bowl car ad, they said, tweet the name of someone you’d like to win one of five new Volvo XC60s, using #VolvoContest, and they’re in with a chance.

Leading up to Super Bowl Sunday, a limited PR budget still produced countless news articles and TV exposure about Volvo’s ploy. In the end there were 230 million media impressions, and 55,000 #VolvoContest tweets during the Super Bowl telecast.

Most importantly, the XC60 had the highest February sales increase of any car in its segment (70.7% year-on-year).