VCCP's Darren Bailes on O2 and England's Giants

With just over a week to go until the England national rugby team walk out at Twickenham to play their first World Cup game against Fiji, today, long-time sponsor O2 launches a monumental campaign to encourage the nation to get behind the players.

With a focus on wearing the patriotic symbol of the rose and showing support to make the team stand tall, the hero animation was created through VCCP and Blinkink Studio with director Elliot Dear at the helm and kicks off a whole host of activity for the brand surrounding the event.

Below ECD Darren Bailes explains how the project evolved from script to screen with the aim of trying to avoid typical sports clichés to galvanise the nation for the momentous occasion.

Tell us about the brief and goal with O2’s new Rugby World Cup campaign strategy before the script was created…

The brief came directly from Stu Lancaster. He wanted us to rally the nation. He wanted the entire country to be wearing England shirts (wearing the rose) at the games, in the pub and at home. It was really that simple. He knew that having the whole country behind his team would give the players an extra 10 per cent boost. O2’s size and reach and 20-year relationship with the RFU makes them the perfect people to do this.

And how did you come up with the script for Make Them Giants from that? What was the inspiration behind the idea you arrived at?

We wanted to demonstrate the power of support, literally. The more support the players receive, the more powerful they become. They run faster, stand taller. But we needed to engage a mass audience beyond the world of rugby. So we chose to create a fable-like world to tell our story. Animation was the perfect solution providing a gentle beautiful world that’s very different to typical sports marketing.

Was it always scripted to be an animated project?

It was always scripted as an animated world.

Why was Elliot Dear right to realise that vision?

Elliot is a wonderful storyteller. He has a lightness of touch that’s hard to find that helped us avoid your typical sports clichés. He uses a combination of classic single cell animation intertwined with high-tech techniques.

Tell us about the creative process from there and how the agency has worked with the director…

Since February, starting from day one Elliot and VCCP have collaborated at every stage even with the casting of the animation team, choosing the right background artist, lead animator, character designer and so on. It’s been a very lengthy and detailed process where we’ve met at least once every week to go through latest character development, backgrounds then into animatic, then colour, movement, expressions details, details, details and even more details.

And the film and characters set the agenda for a nationwide, integrated campaign this September. Tell us about how the story will immerse rugby fans in the coming weeks…

The animation sets the agenda for the duration of the World Cup, it’s our call to arms. From that we have enabled the country to physically wear the rose. We’ve given away 50,000 free England shirts through O2 priority and one million rose badges will be available to everyone. Online and socially we’re giving people the chance to participate virtually with an avatar maker.

Through partnerships with the Evening Standard and The Sun newspapers we’ll be giving away two million posters to adorn bedrooms and windows across the country. There’s also outdoor, digital outdoor, press, online special builds and social. We’ve even created short animations and stills that play out ‘in-game’ through Twitter and Instagram. And if that wasn’t enough we’ve changed the O2 logo to Rose 2 across all stores, websites and comms to show our commitment to wearing the rose.

The sound work for the film is as epic as the animation and the commercial is an extremely well-crafted piece of filmmaking. Do you think it’ll be impossible for viewers not to be touched?

If a 66-piece orchestra, 74 backgrounds, 30 animators, eight producers and 18,420 man-hours of pure heartfelt love and craft can’t move you, you must be a zombie.

And why do you think the concept will resonate with rugby fans as the drama progresses on the field?

Because it’s an emotional story, one that shows vulnerability and real human emotions. We’ve all been there. We’ve all felt the extra power we get from a bit of support. And it doesn’t end with the 120” film, there will be three more bespoke 40” films released during the play-off stages that will be reactive to how the team are playing, celebrating wins, rallying the country for losses. They keep the story moving as the drama unfolds.