Americans with slow internet spend an outrageous amount of time waiting for their content to load. Which is insane because AT&T has insanely fast internet – with near gig download and upload speeds.

We were given a small media buy, a tiny production budget, and the very big task of proving that a product with very little awareness, AT&T Fiber Internet, provides a fast internet experience.

Partnering with artist and influencer Pablo Rochat, we turned the most annoying part of the internet into bite-sized vignettes of entertainment. We faced slow speeds head-on by turning the universal symbol of waiting on a connection into a graphic that posed as a lagging loading wheel. Just when we fooled audiences into thinking they were stuck in a loading-wheel holding pattern, the wheel took on a life of its own. This all played out to the delight of the audience and positioned AT&T Fiber as an undeniable solution to their slow internet issues.

When it comes to our internet lives (i.e., our entire lives), there is nothing we fear more than being hit with a loading wheel. After all, there’s a reason why it’s recognized by many as “the spinning wheel of death.” Because loading wheels ruin nights when you’re binge watching Succession. They make you look bad in front of your boss over Zoom. And they drive you insane when they disrupt your YouTube rabbit-hole at 2:17am. We decided to capitalize on that fear and put the notion of “buffering equals bad news” to work by putting a new spin on the loading wheel.

We open on a loading wheel as though your content is actually loading. It loads… and loads… and loads… every millisecond, a tiny bit of the incomplete circle fills in. Then suddenly, right when your blood is at peak boiling point and you’re about to angry-scroll away, the loading wheel does the unexpected and animates.

It becomes an angry emoji face with #$?!@ written across its mouth; a tire that pops and goes flat; an object that gets in the way of a gaming character; etc. Each execution illustrates how AT&T solves the most common and frustrating internet problem—waiting—with reliability and speed.

Please see the confidential information for the jury section.