Telstra in Australia has launched the new T-Hub touch screen landline phone with an integrated advertising campaign featuring Scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell, the man who patented the telephone in 1876. Bell’s head appears in holograph form in television commercials, inserts, outdoor, direct marketing, point of sale and print advertising, and digital footage.
The Telstra T-Hub combines a traditional home phone with mobile phone-type applications, with an 18-centimetre touch screen that enables users to make and receive phone calls and text messages, visit Internet sites, play music and radio stations, organise family activities, and view the latest news, sport and weather. Bell, brought back from the past and living in a self-made time capsule, features throughout the campaign to grudgingly acknowledge that the Telstra T-Hub is not just an evolution in home phones but, more significantly, a revolution.
Click on the image below to play the first commercial in YouTube
Click on the image below to play the Paperweight video in YouTube
Click on the image below to play the YouTube Kitty video in YouTube
On 25 April the campaign hit print with a gazette-style newspaper insert featuring historical articles about the invention of the telephone. When unfolded, the other side of the gazette opened into a poster featuring the chronology of the phone since Bell’s original invention. See more on the campaign at Newspaper Works.
Credits
The T-Hub campaign was developed at Three Drunk Monkeys, Sydney, by executive creative directors Justin Drape and Scott Nowell, creative director Leslie Ali, lead creatives Damian Fitzgerald and Matt Heck, creatives Becky Alperstein and Russell Smyth (print), group content director Dan Beaumont, content directors Jill Large and Georgina Ashley, content manager Daniel Deutsch, content executive Jacqueline Pollard, agency producers Thea Carone, Helen Willis, Mel Herbert and Tom Harrison (print).
Justin Drape, Co-founder of Three Drunk Monkeys, said: “Mr Bell invented his original phone in 1876 so we decided to bring him back to observe how advanced telephony has become in his absence. It’s been a lot of fun introducing him to life in 2010 because he’s got a hell of a lot to catch up on.”
Filming was shot by director Martin Granger via Soma Films, Sydney, with executive producer Sam McGarry, director of photography Andrew Lesnie.
Media was managed at OMD by business director Aaron Quirk and account director Chris Caley.
The print campaign team included art buyer Alice Quiddington, photographer Derek Henderson, producer Benjamin Hames, Mac operators Dian McLeod, Terry Barridge, Mike Witcombe, Terry Chisholm, Mitchell Annear. Retouching was done at Electric Art, Cranky Mermaid and Cream.