Three Mobile's New Campaign is Feline Good

After the huge success of last year's Pony campaign which saw the titular character moonwalk across a field to the sound of Fleetwood Mac, how would Wieden+Kennedy London follow it up? 

In style, that's how. Chris Lapham (copywriter) and Aaron McGurk (art director) at W+K are the creative team behind the new spot, which still employs some animal magic and a thumping tune. Below they discuss the difficulty of following such a well-received campaign, the inspiration behind the new spot, called Sing It, Kitty, and creating a mini-X-Factor

What was the brief from the client for this project?

The brief was to follow on from the successful Pony campaign with something that conveyed silly stuff as being an important thing in people’s lives and establish Three as a fun, entertaining brand.

In other words, ‘Beat that!’ was our brief.

How did you arrive at the eventual idea and concept?

We explored various ways to express the power of silliness and what silly stuff means to us all, but what was important was that we contribute to the world and not just reflect it. This meant making something entertaining that people could also share and enjoy on the internet using their mobile phones.

We wanted the idea to make you feel something, be surprising and have a certain amount of meaning to it. Not just something silly that has no relevance.

We found a clip of two boys lip-syncing to Backstreet Boys with gusto and passion and it made us all laugh, whilst also showing how silliness acts like human superglue.

Those two boys became the Girl and the Cat - two friends sharing a moment of silly. We then worked on different scenarios involving the duo with different songs, finally settling on the idea of a big, adventurous road trip that turns out to be just a quick pedal round a tiny cul-de-sac. A sense of wonder and awe that we all experienced as a kid.

Three Pony was brilliantly received, was there ever the thought of continuing with that character?

That would probably be the expected thing, which is why we didn’t do it. We didn’t want to be a one trick… brand. Three is about creating new, surprising and refreshing content.   

Like Pony, the soundtrack is integral to the feel of the spot; what was the process of getting to that particular choice?

We wanted a big anthem. Something that made the piece feel epic and grand, but also something that could involve a duet between our two heroes.

Like always we spent days with our ears plugged in to Spotify, searching for the right thing and then days arguing over whether it made us cringe, fall asleep or smile.

What was the deciding factor in choosing We Built This City…?

We finally chose We Built This City, because it’s a classic tune that you have to belt out with passion. It doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s fun.

Plus the lyrics provided a funny juxtaposition. Seeing a little girl belt out a grown-up song that’s normally reserved for big-perm-hair rockers made us laugh. 

What did Traktor bring to the project?

The boys at Traktor (Ole and Patrick) got the whole “everything’s big and exciting when you’re down in a little girl’s world” thing. They wrote a great treatment that was filled with both silliness and epicness. Two -ness boxes that were ticked in our head.

Their approach to achieving great casting and a great cat performance filled us with confidence and it worked.

They also brought a few pints of Guinness to the project.

The girl in the spot is fantastic; what was the casting process like?

It was our own version of The X-Factor, only without the limos and sunny villas. We held auditions in London and Manchester. Both were open to stage schools and street casting.

We had our ‘Chico Time’ moment when one little girl (and her huge guitar) performed her own song for the audition. And we had our ‘Louis walkout’ moment when Chris was out-voted on whether she was a winner. But thankfully we had our ‘Leona Lewis’ moment when Jolie got on the bike and let loose on the song.

Was it difficult to decide what the cat should look like?

We didn’t want it to be just another typical cat in an ad. Apart from the fact that we wanted the girl to be a real star, we also wanted the cat to stand out in a unique way. This meant choosing a cat that had a different personality to what you normally see. We wanted it to be cute, but unusual.

Then we found this little flat-faced fella online and the casting session was over.

What was the hardest part of the process?

Working with kids and animals is meant to be the hardest thing apparently, but we’d like to add CGI animals to that list.

Hats off to MPC, who spent many a late night creating, re-creating and perfecting our cat.

With Pony there was the interactive element with Pony Mixer; is there a similar element for this spot?

A digital idea was always going to be integral to the campaign. We wanted to create something that involved people using their mobile phones to create silly content that fuelled friendships.

So we created ‘Sing It Kitty’ a web-app - alongside Stink Digital -  that takes a still shot of you and your friends’ faces and puts them in to a music video on our cul-de-sac.It then morphs your face so that it lip-syncs the song perfectly with eye-squinting, eyebrow-raising passion.