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Alternative media
A wild party with a message to deliver
By Diego Vasquez
Apr 25, 2008 - 6:31:03 AM

Sometimes a witty out-of-home campaign is the perfect complement to a series of TV ads already airing. The kick comes when folks make the connection.

In Toronto a local agency, Taxi Toronto, took over a house in an area of the city where a lot of college kids live. They quickly turned the place into a mess, with trash all over the front yard, from streamed toilet paper to broken furniture, giving the impression that a wild bash had taken place there the night before, leaving passersby to wonder just what had gone on.

Then they left. The house sat that way for a day.

Then on the second night, about the time the neighborhood had gotten used to the mess, the words appeared on the house, shot up by a light projector: "How do you explain this to your landlord?"

What looked like a fraternity party that had gone all wrong turned out to be a staged event for Telus, a Canadian telecommunications company. Telus had been running TV ads for its Smartphones, which allow users to communicate by voice, text, email and instant message.

The campaign's catchphrase: "How would you connect?"

People got it.

"One woman looked at the house, and then saw the projection and said, ‘Oh, I know this campaign,’" recalls Natalie Armata, brand lead at Taxi Toronto. The TV ads had been running over the month prior.

Armata says the ideas for the projections came through brainstorming sessions, but that the overall idea was to show potential consumers how handy a Smartphone can be in different social situations.

What could be more uncomfortable than explaining to a landlord how you'd just wrecked his house?



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