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In the final days before any campaign goes live the working days tend to get longer as the t’s are crossed and the lower case j’s are dotted, but with a campaign as unusual as giffgaff Tool Hire it should have come as no surprise that they also got weirder.

And so it was, on launch day minus one, a crack team of creatives and one unfortunate Account Manager (who wishes not to be named Duncan) were dispatched to get some heart-warming photos of the giffgaff Gimp helping passers-by in central London.

gimp - Tourists

According to the aforementioned luckless account man ‘you don’t know embarrassment until you have stood in a side-street in your pants trying to pull on a pink spandex gimp suit, while office workers crowd the windows above you to get a better look.’

The strangeness didn’t end there either.

With literally hours to go to launch it was decided that giffgaff needed a song.  Of course it needed a song (slaps hand to forehead).  It would have been remiss, nay, negligent to launch such a brand without a jingle.

Well, who needs Josh and his Superband (what is a Superband anyway?) when you have Youtube star Daveyboyz and an Account Manager who seems to have taken rather a liking to lurid spandex on hand for an impromptu gig in the corner of the Albion board room

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They went on to rally the troops with a lovely bit of Roberta Flack’s Killing me softly.

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The Musicle

The new people powered mobile service giffgaff goes live today (Wednesday 24th). It’s been a busy time for us creating the brand from scratch. But the job has really just begun. Now everyone has to know about it. And what better way for a people powered company to spread the word than let the people do the spreading. Oh, yawn you’re thinking another UGC advertising campaign? Well no.

giffgaff Tool Hire is now open for business. Anyone can hire a giffgaff tool, but here’s the hard bit – you’ve got to go and do something interesting with it. You could take out The Musicle (pictured above) and delight the crowds with pedal-powered sounds. Or you could take out Cuddle Monster with a few friends and fondle… er cuddle people.  There are currently 13 tools (with more to come) and all are physically delivered by van to the hirer in a suitably agreeable location. Hirers must then use the tool to help people out in a way that will bring joy to the people, with one of their friends filming them. The carrot is a year’s free service for both of them. A bit of mutual back scratching, like the brand itself. And unlike most user generated campaigns it shows some imagination from the brand.  giffgaff provide the tools, the people provide the power.

To be fair no sane company would ever construct such a way of promoting itself. But giffgaff isn’t an ordinary kinda company. The project has nearly buried 2 legal teams, several producers and teams of prop makers.

We’ve even created the giffgaff song.  Will it give X Factor a run for its money at Xmas?  No.

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Our Skype online ads for CNN sponsorship are going down very well!

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Today we picked up the Flashtalking award for our new Air New Zealand online campaign ‘Personality Allowed‘.

And here’s our proud Albion team:

DSC_04142

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Yesterday we were asked to submit to an industry event what we thought were the best, most viral online ads of the decade. We did this list as an Albion group effort.

Teddy remarked that its all very recent which either means we all have very short memories or the work is getting better.

I think its the latter.  So here you go.

  1. Subservient Chicken: coz it was very funny http://www.bk.com/en/us/campaigns/subservient-chicken.html
  2. Lynx ‘Tickle’: boys like to tickle a girl with a feather and watch her giggle. http://www.axefeather.com/#
  3. Nike Photo ID by AKQA http://awards.akqa.com/Awards2008/iab/Nike_Photo_iD/default.html Amazing integration of complex image processing technology with a mobile device.
  4. Orange – Worlds first internet balloon race http://www.playballoonacy.com/ Just a really innovative online advertising campaign that took ‘being viral’ to another level.
  5. Skype Nomad: www.skypenomad.com – Did we really get her to do that?
  6. Carousel for Phillips http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ3D4CqHbJM –  Because it was beautiful and amazing and online.
  7. Why So Serious (for The Dark Knight) for Warner Bros ….the promotion was so good it was better than the film (no good link, not a genuine anyway)
  8. Uniqlock for Uniqlo http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=C1CED11F8DD7D820&search_query=Uniqlock+for+Uniqlo+Advert made us think the brand was uberchic not cheap
  9. The Great Schlep for the Jewish Council for Education and Research –  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCqofKxjDZY Funny, Funny and got people to vote
  10. Whopper Sacrifice. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI4uzOAtPiE Delete ten friends and get a free whopper. Genius because it tapped into an existing truth- you have friends on facebook you care so little about, you’d swap them for a whopper.

All thoughts welcomed and god bless all those people out there that made them happen.

By: Jason | Category: Thinking | No Comments yet »