Last night was an interesting one indeed – an entirely free event, put on by 02, for 02 customers. Hosted of course, at the 02.
The brand is blue. Blue is the brand. Now, we all know the brand by its strange adverts involving bubbles, and sometimes characters swimming under the sea. It’s your 02 afterall!
Arriving at North Greenwich, heading outside to ‘discover’ the infamous ‘dome’ for the first time – I was surprised by how big it was and by how conveniently close to the tube exit too. Good planning indeed. Travelling there was a little bit far – Jubilee line from Waterloo took about 20mins – so just under an hour to get back to West London late at night! But worth it!
Blue on the inside – the Indigo 02 is the smaller music venue – a flexi-venue as it’s been called. Its not quite the stadium where Snow Patrol played last week, but then it was still a decent size and prob had a capacity of about 2,000 and a crowd last night of 1,000 plus.
The occasion it seems, was the launch of a new ’02 call your home country’ SIM card! It was lost on me until I got the press pack with a press release explaining the concept. I was there cos I wanted to see the Parlotones – South Africa’s very own international talent with a huge career unfolding before them!So the Parlos opened and played about nine kick ass songs. Following them was a ve strange Kiwi duo called The Ruby Suns, who halfway through became a trio as someone else wandered on stage and played percussion (ve badly), alas – their electronic weirdness didn’t hold anyone’s attention.
And the main act of the night was Aussie Ben Lee – who had been described to me by someone in the crowd as a boring version of Jack Johnson. Well, Im a Jack Johnson fan, so I stuck around to check it out – and pleased to report I enjoyed it!
But by then we were talking to the Parlotones guys – who, surprisingly, were not falling asleep on their feet, the poor Parlo guys had only flown in from Texas that day, fresh off the many stages of SXSW – in London to play this one night only ‘O2 Your Country’ before flying to Glasgow to kick off their support slot on the Starsailor national tour. Check out next month’s issue of SA PROMO for an article on all that they guys have crammed into and achieved in their lives of late!
But back to the concept – a clever series of concerts – focusing on different areas in the world were used to promote this new calling card. So last night was South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. Tonight is focusing on Eastern Europe countries and tomorrow on Middle Eastern artist! Clever indeed
Rock on clever campaigns and big marketing budgets,
X
PS. In the press pack was a yellow rubber duck – the classic type from bath time memories of one’s youth – but why is 02 associating with yellow ducks...?Then, this morning in the free weekly edition of ShortList – I was surprised to see not one, but two companies using lots of little yellow rubber ducks. The first one was GoodYear tyres with ducks falling out the back of a truck onto a road – and the second one was 02, the slogan was ‘Surprises of all sizes every time you top up’… with lots of ducks floating down a river with hooks coming out their heads as if at a country fair where you’d catch your duck, and win a prize! 1 x yellow duck mystery sorted.
