Balloon race

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The dividing line between media and creative can be wafer thin in the digital space and this is a campaign that combines some sharp media thinking with a great creative idea.

Orange’s Balloon Race was a chance for the mobile operator to promote its pay as you go tariffs – represented by four different balloon animals to indicate the four main types of mobile user.

It achieved this by creating a digital event that required consumer participation, provided an incentive for websites to take part and created a sense of excitement.

The metric worked by asking websites to add a small piece of code to their sites that will allow the race to pass through their digital airspace. The benefit was the extra web traffic as the balloons made their way across the internet. Media owners that took part include Yahoo and The Sun but consumers with social networking pages could also get their territory overflown.

Consumers who signed up to race could select their balloon type and give it a name. To make it travel fast they had to get friends to support it using tools for social networking sites such as Bebo, Facebook and MySpace. Users could also track their balloon during the race and use controls to help it on its way.
The winner got £18,500 to spend on a week in Ibiza with seven friends.
More than 30,000 consumers took part and 2,500 sites opened up their digital airspace to the promotion.

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