On October 27th 2010, thousands of unsuspecting passengers arriving at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 were given a welcome home to remember. People were greeted by a 300 strong choir and vocal orchestra singing a medley of songs, completely a cappella, to welcome them back into the country.

30,000 passengers arrive at Heathrow Terminal 5 each day. We decided to give them a surprise welcome home to remember.

We auditioned singers and beat-boxers and sent out text messages to existing T-Mobile customers asking them to audition too.

We then assembled and rehearsed a 300 strong choir and vocal orchestra who were to ‘punk’ the unsuspecting public by suddenly appearing and singing a variety of songs, completely a-cappella, to make the public laugh and join in. The performance ended with everyone singing ‘Welcome Home’ by Peters & Lee, to make people feel like returning heroes or rockstars as they walked through the arrivals hall. We captured the event throughout the day with 18 hidden cameras then edited the footage into a special 3 minute commercial that broadcast on TV and online 48 hours later. Footage from the event created enough content for the 3 month campaign.

38,000+ fans across 8 markets submitted video entries.Over 45,000 minutes of user generated content submitted.420,000+ votes made for the best local videos. 175,000 new Deutsche Telekom Facebook fans across all markets.Three minute online ad achieved 470,000+ hits.‘Firework’ video achieved 167+ million video views.EMI Music’s #1 most viewed video of all-time on VEVO.5th most shared video of all time.Most viewed brand funded content of all time.Deutsche Telekom’s internal “Brand Fit” tests showed that the campaign drove the “Life is for Sharing” positioning, with average of 10% uplift over all markets.