The core idea was conceived by the agency around the concept that society is constantly telling us to put our phones down, but in fact, “phones are good”. They actually play a positive role in society and unite people in helping figure out day-to-day situations, facilitating our lives in small ways.

The plan was to create a series of distinct proposition based campaigns that through relatable, humorous visual communication would encourage people to use their phones without any guilt. By attaching conversational “text language” headlines to entertaining imagery the brand would allow people to resonate with scenarios whilst enjoying the moment, creating a meaningful and memorable impact.

We were briefed to produce visuals that would enrich the headlines with further emotive and entertaining qualities in unpredictable ways, whilst maintaining a premium but digital aesthetic.

The visuals contributed to print and digital content across a broad range of platforms due to the on-going nature of the campaign. It was launched through an OOH & DOOH campaign across the major UK cities with case sensitive placement, meaning messaging and insights were relevant to their context. The communication filtered into social & VODs for Three’s brand partnerships and smaller brand messaging.

The nature of the campaign is conversational and relatable, relevant forms of communication for a service company such as Three that needs to build trusting and friendly consumer to brand relationships.

The visuals were conceptualised to be real-life objects that behaved in surreal, virtual ways. Inspired by the internet of 2018 and meme-culture, they ridiculed human behaviour through absurdity and appeared of an emoji world through their consistent bold, simple and instantly readable style. However through 3D we transformed them into premium visualisations with a slick, high production value. Consistency in lighting and set created a seamless identity, using Three’s brand colours to create highlights, giving each icon the same finish.

Cutting edge 3D was the essential craft to push the boundaries of reality and marry the hyper-real with the photo real in a premium aesthetic. Through 3d animation, icons were built with realistic materials and colours down to extremely high-resolution detail. Real qualities such as weight and scale were able to add to the realism. However animation allowed flexibility in disrupting any sense of logic through surreal manipulations & distortion, ultimately creating totally surprising and humorous visuals.