Saatchi & Saatchi’s T-Mobile ‘Dance’ takes home Best TV commercial of 2009 at this year’s British Television Advertising Awards
11 MAR 2010
At the British Television Advertising Awards (BTAA) ceremony held last night at Grosvenor House, T-Mobile ‘Dance’ won the award for the Best television commercial of the year, the main award of the evening.
‘Dance’ was Saatchi & Saatchi London’s first advert as part of the T-Mobile ‘Life’s for Sharing’ campaign and saw 350 dancers break into a choreographed routine in Liverpool Street Station. The event was described by the Sun newspaper as ‘an epidemic of joy’.
Paul Silburn, Creative Partner at Saatchi & Saatchi London says: “With this ad we seem to have really captured the British appetite for optimism at a time when we were in the teeth of recession.”
This recognition from the BTAA follows a number of accolades for Saatchi & Saatchi’s T-Mobile work, including six awards at the 2009 Cannes Lions Advertising Festival and the same at the 2009 Eurobest awards, making Saatchi & Saatchi the most highly awarded British agency at both awards ceremonies.
‘Dance’ has since been followed up by two more iterations of the ‘Life’s for Sharing’ campaign, ‘Sing-along’ and ‘Josh’s Band’, with each chapter progressively handing more control of the campaign over to fans of the brand.
With ‘Sing-along’ Saatchi & Saatchi created an event that was even more authentic than ‘Dance’, inviting people through texts, YouTube and facebook to take part in the next ‘Life’s for Sharing’ event. On the day, 13,500 people turned up at Trafalgar Square in the centre of London to belt out karaoke classics.
Most recently, ‘Josh’s Band’ saw Saatchi & Saatchi and T-Mobile follow the efforts of Josh, a genuine customer and amateur muscian, to create a superband with T-Mobile’s ‘Free texts for life’ offer.
‘Josh’s Band’ had social media firmly at its heart. Everyone featured in the ads were friends and acquaintances of Josh who had become involved either by receiving a text from Josh, or by getting in contact via his MySpace page (www.myspace.com/joshward84) or on Twitter http://twitter.com/joshward84.
For the culmination of ‘Josh’s Band’, Saatchi & Saatchi released a three minute TV commercial, which aired on the one year anniversary of ‘Dance’, bringing the Life’s for Sharing campaign full circle. The ad featured the song ‘Come with me’, written and performed by Josh’s 1107 superband members. What’s more, the song was released as a single by Universal Records.
The British Television Advertising Awards began in 1976 to recognise and reward the best television and cinema commercials made by British advertising agencies and production companies. The event attracts an entry of almost a thousand commercials, making for very stiff competition. The Best TV Commercial of the Year is the top prize awarded on the night for the work and is an accolade that is held in very high regard by the advertising industry and clients alike.
Notes to editors
Saatchi & Saatchi London is known for its strength in creating Loyalty Beyond Reason for its clients’ brands. Its clients include the Labour Party, NSPCC, Carlsberg, Visa, Guinness, T-Mobile, Axa, Olay, Ariel and Head & Shoulders. Saatchi & Saatchi Network has 140 offices in 80 countries and 6,500 employees.
Saatchi & Saatchi London is part of the SSF Group, a mini group within the Publicis Groupe that unites Saatchi & Saatchi and Fallon in the USA and the UK.
