Vodafone Double Back

About a man and a double rainbow

The success of a new Vodafone ad featuring an internet sensation with a niche following was riding on our ability to get New Zealanders to understand the story of a big, hairy American and his love for double rainbows. No pressure then.

When Vodafone brought Paul ‘Bear’ Vasquez, creator of the YouTube ‘Double Rainbow’ video sensation, to New Zealand in December 2010 to film an ad for its Double Back promotion, our brief was simple. But a big ask. With less than half a day of his time we had to publicise the Double Rainbow story so the ad would make sense to Kiwis.

We also had to keep the story under wraps until the ad was aired nearly a month later, despite media wanting to cover it over the quiet holiday period.

So we set about arranging a series of embargoed briefings and interviews with a wide range of trusted Kiwi media in which Paul explained the Double Rainbow video phenomenon and spoke about his unexpected rise to Internet super-stardom.

The exercise was a huge success and on 17 January nearly $311,000-worth of coverage started appearing across a wide variety of New Zealand media, nicely complementing the launch of Vodafone’s Double Back promotion.

3 News, Nightline, The Edge, ZM, 95bFM, Scoop.co.nz, Stuff.co.nz, MediaBistro.com, StopPress, Campaign Brief, Grown-ups.co.nz and social media commentator David Farrier’s Twitter-stream all ensured the story reached more than 5.6 million people. And that ensured Vodafone’s ad made sense.  

Porter Novelli team: Kyra Holland, Joanna Macfarlane, Sarah Geel