After two successful brand campaigns in 2009, T-Mobile wanted their third campaign to focus around their Pay As You Go tariff, whilst still maintaining their Life’s for Sharing philosophy.The tariff offered free texts and internet for life. We felt it was such a good offer that we didn’t just want to tell people it was empowering we wanted to prove it - by seeing what someone could achieve just by using the free texts and internet.By doing so, we had to attract new customers to T-Mobile Pay As You Go and increase sales across stores and online.So we decided to find someone from the general public who would be willing and brave enough to take up this challenge.Whoever that would be, would become the protagonist of the campaign for the next three months, sharing their life and their mission with the whole country through a variety of different media.

We put together a documentary film crew and asked the target audience what they could make happen with the offer.A guy called Josh Ward said he’d start a ‘superband’, so we gave him the product and challenged him to do it.We had no idea whether he would succeed or fail in creating a ‘superband’ as we didn’t know anything about him, except that he was up for the challenge.

Josh texted every musician he knew, and then used his myspace to attract musicians he didn’t know.He travelled around meeting them all, and plotted them on a google map that became a database of British musicians.He used his own twitter account to stay in touch, and uploaded video diaries to his youtube channel.He organised special gigs to promote the band, and wrote songs with different members.All this content was used in TV (an average of one 30” per week), print, radio and digital outdoor campaign.

Josh did create a ‘superband’.To date, Josh’s Band has over 2,500 band members.The band’s story was followed by myspace on their front page.The band attracted esteemed music producer Jonathon Quarmby.The band’s debut track, which features 1107 band members, was released by Universal Records.The music video for the track, which features tour footage of the band and each of the 1107 band members recorded on it, became a special 3 minute TV advert.T-Mobile Pay As You Go sales increased by 61% during the three months of the campaign.Online sales also increased by 30%.During December, when Josh’s Band was on a nationwide tour, T-Mobile had record breaking footfall nationwide.This led to record breaking sales across the board. December, the finale of Josh’s Band, became T-Mobile’s best sales month in their history.