ABOUT

Concept

As 2016 drew to close, everyone was in desperate need of a bit of goodwill. So at BBD Perfect Storm, we wanted to spread a little Christmas cheer. Enter DeFrosty: our very own office snowman on Old Street. He represented all that’s good in the world. Even his carrot was organic.

We asked everyone to share in our Christmas joy and stop DeFrosty from melting by tweeting our hashtag. Every tweet kept him alive for 10 more minutes, and we donated 10p to our chosen charity, Evelina London Children’s Hospital.


Execution

DeFrosty lived in a freezer powered by tweets in an empty shop-front on the corner of Old Street and Goswell Road. The challenge for the digital team was to do something that had never been attempted before, and work out how a freezer could react to activity on Twitter. Their solution involved the creation of a several local networks, 40-feet of cabling, a backroom deal with the modelling agency we share a building with, and a bespoke ‘smart plug.’ The result was that every time someone mentioned the hashtag #KeepDeFrostyAlive, 10 minutes more power was automatically added to help him chill out.

Actually physically building a snowman was the easy part thanks to the delivery of a tonne of real snow and an expert mould from ice topiary specialists Snow Business.

As part of the outdoor installation, DeFrosty was surrounded by a specially-commissioned illustration by Pen Behaving Badly to draw people in and encourage them to join in the festive fun. Every lunchtime there’s a huge amount of foot traffic, and not a day went by without groups of office workers, builders and hipsters grabbing a selfie with our frozen friend.

But if you couldn’t make it down to Old Street in person, you could still take part. We hooked DeFrosty’s freezer up with a live webcam so you could watch him live 24/7 on his own YouTube channel, DeFrostyTV.

DeFrosty also took over our social media accounts, engaging with local businesses, commenting on news stories and giving everyone who tweeted him a cool personalised response.


Results

DeFrosty lived for 19 glorious days. That’s longer than Diane James was the leader of UKIP. In that time he brought an incalculable amount of joy to (C)Old Street, uniting everyone in the post-Brexit and post-truth belief that there was still some goodwill left in the UK.

In summary:
- We raised more than £1000 for charity.
- There were 10,000 mentions of the hashtag across all social media
- We had visitors to the website from 39 different countries, including far-flung hot spots like St Lucia, India and Venezuela that DeFrosty was advised against travelling to himself.
- DeFrosty was mentioned by the likes of Creative Pool, Time Out, Shots, London The Inside, Ads Of Brands, Marcomm News, Advertolog, as well as being included in Campaign’s Top Agency Christmas Campaigns of the Year.

MADEIT CREDITS

  • Evelina London Children’s Hospital and Perfect StormClient
Annual 2017 WinnerKeep DeFrosty AliveOOH Contributor:

BBD Perfect Storm has been a Contributor since 27th February 2019.

Invite x3

Keep DeFrosty Alive

*
*
*
*
*
*
*

Comments