The International calling market is a sea of sameness creatively. Countries' flags are used to create shortcuts to demonstrate the calling rates. It’s an obvious but very immediate creative solution. Our challenge was to create a world which was as immediate to consumers as flags, but also differentiating in the market.

The second challenge was to create a campaign which appeals to an incredibly culturally diverse market. We needed something which appealed to each nationality individually, but was also borne of the same insight

Keeping these challenges in mind, we had a momentous task of doubling market share whilst also dispelling price perception issues.

The greatest challenge was to create the worlds as if they were imagined by the artists. And also to animate them, because even if they worked great as still artwork for print ads, one could only imagine it "alive" and animated.

To help us transform these traditional folk arts we used Maya, Nuke, After Effects. Photoshop, Illustrator, Flame, Arnold, Vray and Flash.

The International campaign was a great success across several different metrics. Not only did it touch our audience emotionally, motivating people to send letters to O2 commending them on ‘outstanding and stunning…positive portrayal’ of their country. The campaign also had high engagement rates with our digital display, outperforming the industry by 100% and driving 80k connections of a SIM during the campaign period, well above expectations. Finally, the campaign delivered exactly what we set out to do, helping to remove price perception issues and starting to generate market share increases for the brand in this difficult category.