Bopheads
TalkTalk
Issue 37 | December 2015
Agency
CHI & Partners
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director Jonathan Burley Creative Director Jim Bolton Creatives James Crosby, William Cottam Executive Producer David Jones Producer Ollie Tancock, David Jones Digital Producer Gary Serradinho Head of Team TalkTalk Jason Coward Planner Simon Ringshall Account Director Will Oakes Account Managers Freddie Eaves
Production Team
Production Company London Alley Directors Emil Nava, Courtney Phillips, Alex Southam Exec Producer Otis Bell Audio Scramble Studios VFX Company MPC Interactive Creative Director Andre Assalino Lead Android Developer Dennis Ippel Lead iOS Developer Gareth Shapiro Lead Front-end Developer Alex Parish Lead Back-end Developer Pedro Rocha Lead Designer Alex de Carvalho Music Company Platinum Rye
Other Credits
Head of Marketing, Talk Talk David Parslow Head of Creative, Talk Talk Paul Godfrey Brand Manager, Talk Talk Simone Damata Brand Executive, Talk Talk Charlotte Griffiths
Date
August 2015
Background
TalkTalk had sponsored 'The X Factor' in previous years and in 2015 had decided to renew their partnership with Simon Cowell's hit TV show.
From August through to the finals of the popular talent show, TalkTalk wanted their idents to reflect the fact that they were all about bringing people great TV which they loved.
Idea
Because fans of the show liked to feel close to it, the idea was to actively involve them by offering them a taste of stardom with an app that allowed them to make and star in their own music video.
Shot by pop's top directors, Emil Nava, Courtney Phillips and Alex Southam, the BopHeads app invited viewers to create their own personal videos. The best of these were edited and broadcast to the whole country during the show's ad breaks.
Fans were captured singing along to tracks such as Little Mix's #1 hit 'Black Magic', John Newman's 'Come and Get It' and nineties hit 'Return of the Mack' by Mark Morrison. Their heads were superimposed onto the bodies of choreographed characters.
Users could also get friends and family into their videos by merging separately-shot performances.
There were three video styles for fans to choose from: 'Onesies', which could feature up to four protagonists dressed in funky onesies; 'Fun House', a magical world of life-size toys; and 'Bounce', a glossy hip-hop set.
Results
From August through to The X Factor live final in December, more than 160 user-generated spots were broadcast. Many thousands more were created and shared, allowing 'X Factor' fans to feel they were participants in the show rather than mere viewers.
Our Thoughts
The big change in advertising over the last ten years has been from making adverts which people simply looked at, passively, to creating ideas that turn people into participants. Push to pull. This campaign is a triumph of pull on that most traditional of push media, clever technology allowing ‘X Factor’ fans to create their own music videos and bask in thirty seconds of fame when they were broadcast to an audience of millions. As the digeratii might say, clearly the team at CHI “get it”.