Three, a UK mobile operator had a problem. People didn’t care about their network, they had low brand awareness and low consideration scores. In order to grow their business they needed two things – brand fame and brand love.

Three had a unique position, being the UK’s first 3G operator; they were the network built for the Internet. But we realised it was the content on the Internet that would get them brand fame, not the network that supported it. The content that people loved the most was the silly stuff – waving bears and tickled sloths. This was the stuff that brightened their day and they shared with others. Three were going to make a stand for the silly stuff, but instead of simply saying it, they decided to show it.

So we created the silliest things for the internet we could think of. A glorious moonwalking Shetland pony.

To create a spike of interest, we launched the pony with high-impact TV, online and digital out-of-home, spending our total media budget in just 17 days, to reflect natural ‘peaks’ of Internet content.

And to help spread our content around the Internet, we built www.ponymixer.com - a web-based app built responsively so it would work fluidly across mobile, tablet and desktop. It allowed you to customise your own version of the ad; changing the music, effects, adding props and selecting different scenes. You were then encouraged to personalise with your own message and share with your friends via email and social media. Three then chose the best of these user-generated creations to go back onto TV, along with the sharing message sent with it.

On their official channel the campaign generated 1.5m YouTube views after the first weekend and over 10m to date. A massive 95% of people that were sent the film, shared it on to someone else. There were over 1.3m ponies generated via The Pony Mixer, 215k shared their creations and the app had an average dwell time of 5m39s. During the 17-day campaign, there were 190k tweets using the campaign hashtag #DancePonyDance with a grand total of 99,177,352 impressions. Positive online sentiment of the brand increased by 67% and Three left the world in no doubt that they were the network built to bring you the stuff you loved. We made some silly stuff that mattered - and the Internet spread it because they loved it too.

Not bad. For a silly moonwalking pony.