We wanted to show how restrictive the other wireless carriers really are, and found the perfect vehicle with Drake’s hit song and video about cell phones. By showing how the “suits” from those companies would ruin “Hotline Bling,” we made the difference between those carriers and the Un-carrier, T-Mobile, loud and clear.

Working against a Super Bowl deadline, we shot and edited the spot during two weeks in January and released the 30-second version on The Today Show a week before the big game. A 60-second version was then released as the first-ever minute-long ad on Instagram. T-Mobile CEO John Legere ran a Twitter poll asking the public which version they liked more, and agreed to buy the airtime to run the :60 during the game.

The spot helped garner over 6 billion brand impressions and generated nearly 100,000 unique mentions on social. It also landed on nearly every best-of list for Super Bowl 2016 and was ranked the #2 spot in the game by AdWeek.