Reckon you'd be up to the challenge of posting a Tweet a minute for three days? For their latest campaign V Australia and Droga5 did exactly that, sending three budding jetsetters to Sydney to paint the town red while sharing their antics online.
Briefed by Virgin to position Los Angeles and Sydney as realistic weekend destinations for residents of the two cities, Droga5 creatives Ben Akers and Ben Smith decided to stick their Twitter fingers up at the idea of a press campaign to come up with something rather more unusual.
The first stage of their online adventure launched back in July, when three members of the Australian public were challenged to a non-stop Tweet-fest in LA - 72 hours, 4,320 Tweets (that's one per minute for the mathematically challenged) and the dangling carrot of around the world flights to keep them on track. With a constant stream of updates posted on the 4320syd.com Tweet wall, followers could keep track of the goings on of Jade, Rob and Bobby as they threw themselves into the deep end of the LaLa pool with tattoos, botox and chest waxing escapades galore.
Having successfully completed the mission, the ball was bounced back to American soil for the second leg of the campaign, which went live in September on 4320la.com. This time it was up to Kelvin, Matt and Nathan to play explorers with sheep shearing, shark diving and a live drag show on the agenda.
"We looked at the target audience and said, 'these people don't live their lives by the day, they don't even live it by the hour, they live it by the minute," explains Smith. "The idea of having a group Twittering about the cities was a perfect fit - quenching Generation C's thirst for real time content while, proving that LA and Sydney are do-able in three days."
For the LA stage, the hunt for the Twitterers began with an open call for applicants to submit a one line Tweet about why they should be chosen for the challenge. Having narrowed the group down to a slim 20, the shortlisted entrants were invited to take part in a live, on-air 'Tweet Off' broadcast on LA radio station Nova96.9.
"We had thousands of entries, which Smithy and I trawled through one by one," recalls Akers. "We had to be certain we got three guys or girls who wouldn't go off and get pissed; and we realised that failure wasn't an option. After all, the weekend was the challenge, not the prize."
In addition to the constantly updated websites, Droga5 filmed both challenges to create a set of unique travel documentaries to run in-flight on Virgin Blue as well as two half-hour specials for in-flight entertainment on V Australia. The lengthy task of capturing all 72 hours of adventures was down to GoodOil for the Sydney leg and Great Guns for the LA challenge.
"It was a crazy 72 hours for the US crew," says Great Guns EP Tom Korsan. "We had three video crews working three eight hour shifts for three days. Our line producer Emily Carr and her coordinator did a fantastic job designing the events for the Twits, the nickname that was given to Kelvin, Matt and Nathan. Those guys were total troopers, they had no idea what they were in for when the landed. And neither did we, as there was a lot of moving on the fly, it was very guerrilla filmmaking."
And although Twitter became the protagonist of the project, this was more down to the fact that the medium suited the method, rather than the other way round: "Although Twitter was never the idea, we believe we were the first to bring it to life," explains Akers. "Our idea was always to push people to the dedicated sites, so they could see more than just the Tweets. We never set out to create a Twitter campaign, it just happened to be the best tool for the job. We just wanted people to take notice. And they did."
Akers and Smith (aka The Bens) have previously worked together on Virgin Mobile's Right Music Wrongs campaign, where 90s rapper Vanilla Ice was asked to apologise for his crimes against music and the public could vote on whether he should perform or be pelted with tomatoes at the V Festival in Sydney. On top of that, fellow Droga5 creative Paz Molina also recently conjured up a Frenemies Facebook app, also for Virgin. The idea? Nominate people you'd rather left you alone.
"V Australia as a client are open to whatever media seems best for the target market, and campaigns like these work well for the people they want to hit," muses Smith. "Ultimately we're problem solvers. That's what's great about Droga5. Clients tell us what their problems are and we do what we can to help them out. TV and print are great for certain clients and target markets. Other markets need something else. Knowing what is going on technically is important to us as creatives - but again, the technology doesn't become the idea, just the medium."
