2degrees Rhys Darby campaign to launch Sunday night
UPDATED: Watch the ad here.
Riding on the coattails of Saatchi & Saatchi's celebrity angle for the Richard Hammond-fronted XT campaign, 2degrees is set to feature comedian Rhys Darby in its launch campaign, which kicks off this Sunday night.
Agency insiders told Ad Hoc the media spend is "considerable" but still not in the league of that of Vodafone and Telecom.
It's understood the campaign features several TVCs and a series of billboards, plus a blog and website.
The cat was let out of the bag after savvy punters spotted an ad being filmed on Auckland's Takapuna beach.
TBWA won the 2degrees account in May, taking it off indie agency Origami.
GI Media has the media buying and Bullet PR has the public relations honours.
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Comments and questions16
Look forward to seeing that. J and B won't do ads. Rhys is your next choice.
Hopefully hasn't sold out like Hammond and the ads aren't lame
Vodafone has dumbed down, Telecom has dumbed out, we SO need a decent telco campaign. Bleeeeaaaaat!
It can't be as irritating as the XT nonsense. I watched Top Gear the other night and was amazed to rediscover that Richard Hammond wasn't remotely annoying or smug! What's the point of hiring a foreign frontman who trades on cheeky wit, and then making him read a script totally devoid of humour? And the campaign promise was that Hammond "couldn't wait to put [XT] to the test" .... so much so that he never appears to set foot in NZ but instead stands around, improbably wearing a racing driver's boiler suit, in some studio that appears to be based on the multi-page grid on Apple's new version of Safari. Ab-so-lute-ly-ri-dic-u-lous.
PS Jermaine and Bret did once do a couple of commercials for Phones4U in the UK. I'm sure they were just young and foolish at the time.
I presume TBWA will follow the XT campaign's lead, and having snared a frontman famous for his wit, will force him to plod through a humourless script, improbably dressed as a parody of himself, while standing in front of the matrix-style home page in Apple's new version of Safari. And of course creating a campaign promise that is never fulfilled because the frontman never actually sets foot in the country where the service exists. Genius.
You're right. That's actually the first time I saw them. It was a prototype of the Kiwibank Smartarse car with speakers campaign, from memory. But that's another story.
We get to see all in the first ad break after the 6pm news is what I've been told. Undoubtedly Rhys has the best lines in flight of the concords so personally, I'm really looking forward to seeing what they've come up with.
No wonder XT beats the jet boat - they had to stop the jetboat durning the race to mount then dismount a ?camera? on the jetboat's roll bars (it's not there at the start and end of race, but is in some shots in the middle).
Or maybe what we were shown isn't completely true.
I still don't really get why someone racing a jetboat vs a mobile phone is supposed to make me want to use Telecom?
I'm still trying to get my head around the original 2 degrees proposition. Someone's been reading too much Malcolm Gladwell me thinks.
Every morning I have to listen to her indoors going ballistic over the tremendous waste of money she thinks Telecom is spending and our monthly phone bills are more than she spends on shoes bla bla bla
Hmmm. Two degrees. Not hard. Ok. I met Janet Jackson in LA in 1990, therefore I am 2 degrees from Michael.
I'm not sure if Rhys will do a disservice to twodegrees... he's actually not funny at all.
Not funny based on what? He's hilarious. If you think HBO (Curb Your Enthusiasm) picks unfunny people to be in their comedies, you're seriously humourless...or over 60
Actually a really good add, and funny.
I am definitely signing up!
Heh the most I have laughed with (rather than at) a Telco ad in a long time. Loved the "... no-one; typical." bit at the end.
I would imagine the Telecom and Voda marketoids will be on the blower to their admen right about now.
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