Brief
The good folks at Google asked us to help promote Gmail. They wanted to get other Gmail users to sign their friends up. We said we'd give it a go.
Insight
Your personality comes out in the emails you write. Not a big secret, we grant you. But a useful insight. And one that, with a bit of outside inspiration, we managed to turn into an entire campaign.
Solutions
We'd worked with Edward Monkton before on the iGoogle Artists project. He's not only an extremely talented illustrator, artist and original thinker. He's also an amazingly friendly guy. When he saw the challenge Google had set us he knew exactly what was required. Enter a magical set of characters from his brilliant mind. These lovable creatures were used to personify a multitude of different personality traits. We then designed a social app that allowed users to send the characters as greetings to their friends via email. Their friends would get the greeting, along with a personal message, and an invitation to sign up to Gmail. It was great fun. It was beautifully simple. And it worked!
Results
Exact numbers are strictly confidential. But we can say that users from across the globe flocked to the microsite from links distributed by Google. Many an invitation was sent. And that drove many a Gmail sign-up. We all lived happily ever after.
