James Rolleston Joins Vodafone

The star of New Zealand’s highest grossing movie is fronting Vodafone’s new brand campaign unveiled on Sunday night.  James Rolleston, lead actor from the much-loved New Zealand film Boy, stars in Vodafone’s new campaign, which refreshes the brand by focusing on helping Kiwis do what they love.

 

Rolleston, who at the age of 12 stole New Zealander’s hearts with his portrayal of Boy, represents many qualities Kiwis hold dear: determination, optimism, creativity, and above all, a love of doing.   

 

Vodafone’s new campaign celebrates these qualities and through Rolleston aims to inspire everyday New Zealanders to use technology to do the things they love to do.

 

Greg Campbell, Marketing Director at Vodafone, explains: “Smart technology gives New Zealanders the power to connect, to create, to be more productive – the power to do more than they had ever imagined – but it can sometimes seem overly complicated or hard to keep up with.  We want to change that. 

 

“James has a practical and down-to-earth view of the world and an incredibly infectious personality. That means he can cut through all the complexity of technology and talk about it in an appealing and engaging way.”  

 

Campbell says finding out what New Zealanders love to do and showing how technology can help is key to the new campaign.

“We wanted to keep things real for our customers so we set out to discover the top 30 things New Zealanders love doing – and identified really useful content to help customers do those things better.

 

 “From the best apps and useful internet links to the right phones and plans, whatever your thing we’ve done the searching so you can get on with doing the doing.”

 

David Thomason, DraftFCB, adds: “Tonally, we’ve taken the brand in a refreshing new direction.   The latest creative executions aim to celebrate the values that New Zealanders love about themselves: innovative yet practical, down to earth while striving for world class outputs.  We’ve coined the phrase “raw sophistication” to describe this “new” New Zealand.”

 

Creative elements include:

 

• A television campaign featuring James Rolleston (of “Boy” fame) on air from Sunday 19 August

• Consumer and business portals providing rich content (internet links and apps) that help Kiwis do what they love to do even better

 

David continues: “The ads are a small part of the new Vodafone brand story, and the business understands the need for tangible differentiation in their product and service delivery.  We’ve been impressed with how this philosophy has been brought to life inside Vodafone and through every consumer touch-point.”