This commercial by THEY for Vodafone, is the talk of the (advertising) town at the moment. No wonder, the mutated guinea pigs are kind of odd. But we think it’s very brave of Vodafone to adopt such a distinctive ad property and respect THEY for being able to sell it. And since it is always hard to judge a completely new concept, we can only say we didn’t expect it from Vodafone. It is actually a campaign we would expect from a completely new player in the market – that needs to build up awareness in a short time – or one with a niche target. The brand proposition ‘Power to you’ sounds a bit like marketing talk. On the other hand, it should give a creative agency enough inspiration to come up with an ‘empowering’ campaign. And the phrase ‘life is too short for hasty calls’ seems illogical (we always keep our calls short for the same reason), but makes sense when used in different ways – ‘Life is too short to search for Wifi’ etc. The campaign is accompanied by a set of banners, made by Achtung! And there’s also a ‘Power to you’ website (also made by Achtung!) dubbed ‘Upgrade a stranger’. Complete strangers, filmed with a hidden camera, can win different gadgets (a mini laptop, a mobile phone, etc.) when the visitors of the website vote for them. We wonder why the mutated guinea pigs don’t play a role in this. You want to push your ad property through different channels, right? And didn’t Vodafone choose for the partnership THEY/Achtung! to enrich the market with truly integrated advertising? To be continued…