Michelangelo’s David was part of a larger campaign driving American Express Cardholders to an online price-drop travel auction, where each day (for nine days) an awesome destination was auctioned. But prices dropped as Cardmembers bid. With stamina, trips could be had for a song. The alternative was to waste a golden chance or pay over the odds. We used field marketing to target Cardholders in the greater London area with a propensity for travel and the likelihood of seeing the campaign’s ambient activity throughout The City.

The entire campaign was based around the idea of ‘get your dream holiday before someone else does’. Each element of the campaign represented one of the destinations on offer. And like the locations bid for by Cardmembers online, each element gradually disappeared or was taken away by someone else. In this case, we recreated a 13ft Michelangelo’s David out of birdseed (to represent Florence) and placed him in a central London park. During the day David was consumed by ravenous pigeons, while simultaneously online, enticing Florentine holidays succumbed to the best bids.

Over 1,200 visitors hopped fences and did double takes in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the majestic David. During the campaign goingonce.co.uk received over 300,000 hits, 80,000 openings and 12,000 click-throughs.