Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Three - The Dancing Pony

Three is a UK-based mobile provider fighting for market share in a crowded and competitive environment.  Their most recent campaign, developed by Wieden + Kennedy London has absolutely blown up on UK television and the Interwebs.  'The Pony' is a truly delightful commercial and has been great in terms of generating awareness (though one could argue about the strength of the association with Three vs. just the Pony).

What's been interesting to me is to see how Three & W+K have extended on the TV commercial in the digital space, as well as taking the digital activity and feeding that back into TV.  If you haven't already seen it, check out 'The Pony' ad below before reading on.


In terms of driving digital activity, Three have created 'The Pony Mixer' which sends users to the Three YouTube channel where they can create their own bespoke version of the Dancing Pony, complete with various visual effects and a wealth of iconic songs to choose from.  That's a fantastic way to deepen the experience for users who are willing to go beyond just a passive view of the video.  You can check out the trailer for the Pony Mixer below.  There's also a heavy Twitter component around the hashtag #DancePonyDance, which generated 14,000 tweets within five hours of the video being uploaded and has continued to be active throughout the life of the campaign.
 

Lastly, Three have also taken the best of of the user generated videos created via The Pony Mixer along with the associated tweets and are running those as follow up TV commericals.  These include versions such as the Bollywood Pony, the Punk Pony and my personal favorite, the Hip-Hop Pony (see below)

Taken together the work from W+K London is just a fantastic example of how various channels can work together in a way that allows each component to extend and amplify the overall campaign.

Also worth noting that, the Poke have created their own hilarious version (not via the Pony Mixer) of the Dancing Pony called the Findus Pony.  For those of you outside of the UK, Findus is one of the brands/vendors caught up in the recent Horsemeat Scandal.

hat tip: Bobby Nolla & Adrian Dent


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1 comment:

  1. I thought this commercial was pretty stupid, even though it does initially catch the eye but I guess some people liked it.

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