For the past few weeks, we’ve been working on an April Fools video, surprisingly for a financial services brand. The video campaign is to promote Barclaycard’s contactless payment technology – PayTag.
Barclaycard’s “PayTag” is an NFC chip, which can be discreetly affixed to mobile phones enabling users to make simple everyday payments without needing their wallet.
We were approached by Barclaycard’s digital agency Dare to help them create a spoof film about #PayWag, an NFC chip embedded in a dog collar that enables dogs to make purchases. The film we produced, which debuted on 1 April (April Fool’s Day), can be viewed below:
After completion of the filming at Barclays headquarters and Jollyes Pet Superstores we delivered the film to Dare, and their Social Media team set to work in seeding the campaign far and wide.
By early in the morning of April 1st the video had quickly amassed over 10,000 views and the campaign gathered momemtum. It racked up 717 ‘Likes’ on the Barclaycard Facebook Page an hour, quickly becoming the most popular ‘Dog Video’ on Facebook. It was featured in The Mirror’s Top 10 April Fools Pranks, got coverage on the ITV Website, as well as Engadget and Mashable’s April Fools Roundups. The video was featured by some of the most popular marketing and communications forums with coverage on Brandchannel, InspirationRoom as well as the world’s second largest trade advertising publication AdWeek. At the time of writing the video has reached over 250,000 views in under 48 hours and #PayWag has been trending on Twitter in various locations around the globe as well as being featured as one of the most popular videos on the YouTube Homescreen:
The campaign has dominated chatter on social networks ranking in the Viral Video Chart, vying for popularity with April Fools campaigns from Google and Twitter who also launched April Fools themed videos:
And was quickly picked up by AdWeek:
The video was loads of fun to work on and we’re delighted that it’s proved so successful. A huge thanks to Jollyes Pet Superstore in Gloucester for letting us film at their store.