How Colenso created Vodafone’s ‘Symphonia’
To showcase the most imaginative use of Vodafone’s products, ColensoBBDO Auckland got Jol Mulholland, a local recording studio engineer, torecreate Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture using the SMS alert sounds of 1000mobile phones.
Working with technical experts from Vodafone in his Auckland studio, Mulholland used 2000 SMS messages sent in sequence to a wall of handsets to create the performance. The resulting brand film is accompanied by two short documentaries that explore the process of creating the symphony.
Launched on October 21st, the campaign has quickly become a massive global conversation. It’s the #1 viewed and #1 favourited New Zealand clip on You Tube, featured on over 12,000 blogs and sitting at #10 on Ad Age’s Viral Video Chart. Since being featured on Wired’s website, the TED conference has requested the campaign to feature at TED India this November.
3 Comments
What technical experts? Oh that’s the PR talk. Nice idea, but the reality is this is quite simply achievable with the alarm function on any phone – no need for operator complicity at all. Surely!
Of course there’s no need for it, play it on a cd if you want to make it easy. Surely the whole point of the stunt was the technical complicity of triggering the phones through texts.
If they spent that money making texts cheaper i’d be more appreciative. even telecom’s sorted it’s act out with $12 unlimited texts to any network. vodafone’s busy screwing us over with network-limited deals. and making cool ads like it’s happy fun times.
excellent job to whoever did the ad but still hate vodafone till they sort their deals out.