giffgaff Flips the Script on Horror Clichés in 2019 Halloween Campaign

In the run up to Halloween, giffgaff, the UK mobile network provider, teams up with Stink Studios to launch its Great Choice campaign. Stink Studios partnered with animation studio TRUBA, famed for their collaboration with Childish Gambino on his hit music video, Feels Like Summer, to bring their signature style to the quintessential challenger brand.

This year giffgaff have been celebrating how giffgaff puts you in control with their campaign 'choose giffgaff'  which is one of their most successful to date and has delivered record awareness. Great Choice is launched in Halloween to extend that message in a noisy Q4. 

Halloween is giffgaff’s Christmas and they celebrate it every year. giffgaff loved Stink Studios idea of tapping into horror tropes - if people just made the obvious choice in the horror movie it would be so much easier.

Layla West, giffgaff's head of social and PR, commented: “There's also the topicality. It's not lost on me that Brexit falls on Halloween and regardless how you feel or what you voted, people don't feel in control. We want to be fun and offer escapism with our Great Choice campaign when everyone is feeling a bit meh, so for the first time in a brand campaign we’ve gone with animation, we love that it offers escapism so you can really dial up the horror and gore! We celebrate Halloween every year and it's always a challenge coming up with something new and animation feels fresh.” 

The campaign challenges our ability as individuals to make good life decisions, especially when it comes to locking ourselves into lengthy mobile phone contracts. In Great Choice we see the characters of three separate animations face multiple scenarios that mirror classic horror tropes, such as turning up at a haunted house and either inexplicably entering or heading sensibly in the opposite direction. Using these stereotypical scenarios, the campaign inspires people to make better choices.

“By bringing TRUBA onboard we were able to achieve a balance of both fantasy and familiarity, capturing the nostalgia of classic horror with a modern internet slant,” says Cameron Temple executive creative director of Stink Studios.

Great Choice will run across social and YouTube, as well as giffgaff's website. Short, punchy content will be platform (and format specific). “The beauty of social is you can be really audience specific, and use the different formats and channels to make an impact while repeating your message so it feels really integrated. We've really thought about each platform and key behaviours - so we have a game on Instagram Stories and Snap, Insta polls, and all of our content runs no longer than 20 seconds!”

The Great Choice messaging will also extend to giffgaff’s refurbished phone packaging - with great choice stickers - so people feel great about choosing to buy a refurbished handset. It’s smart, savvy and more sustainable, so it's a great choice! 

The campaign will be live from 18th October 2019 and run until 2nd November.