The Reserve Bank gave us permission to use the national currency as an advertising medium. We stickered Sir Edmund Hillary’s pixellated image directly onto his portrait on NZ$5 notes - 10 000 of which were seeded into circulation. The reverse of the sticker directed people to www.pago.co.nzWe created a 3D billboard installation out of colour-coded books of post it notes. It was a giant replica of an NZ$5 note. Each post it note had www.pago.co.nz printed on it. 30 000 individual post it notes were used. We also used ‘Hypertag’ technology to turn bus shelters into cash machines.

Launched in Dec 2006, there were 1200 sign ups in the first week (3 x higher than original goal of 400). Target of 33% awareness amongst 18-24yrs in first three months – however, in just two months, audience knowledge of the service was 40%. Within this group 84% accurately recalled the Pago brand. Pago content was delivered to 3,821 mobile phone handsets via Bluetooth/infrared technology (76.4% of subscription goal). ‘Tui’ from Pago collected high profile friends on her myspace page (Peter Jackson, Neil Finn, Steriogram, etc) and Pago is now a recommended payment option on NZ’s largest auction site ‘trademe.co.nz’.