“Data in Dollars,” the Xfinity Mobile pre-roll campaign that cleverly plays off online content we’re all familiar with, scores at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Directed by Thinking Machine's Docter Twins for Goodby Silverstein & Partners, “Data in Dollars” is a series of six-second ads designed specifically for YouTube and exclusively for mobile.  The aim of the campaign is to inform smartphone users how much they're spending on data by turning pre-roll ads into price tags, brilliantly showing viewers the real dollars-and-cents cost of watching the ensuing video.

Matt and Jason Docter economically use wit and a cheeky sense of humor to create a playful send-up of popular YouTube genres, striking just the right tone for each category within the six-second vignettes. In one clip, a soaring basketball player is shocked to learn that watching the upcoming sports highlight video will cost him $1.31 in data (his slow motion exclamation of "whaaaat?" is the subtly perfect comedic embellishment.) Along with sports highlights, the contextually placed content spans makeup tutorials, tech reviews, music videos, game reviews, and movie trailers.

Of the task, Jason Docter remarks, “Communicating a comedic idea in six seconds is extremely challenging.  Working with the amazing team of creatives at GS+P, we approached each film as a print ad — the viewer had to immediately understand the situation to allow for the comedy to beat out.  I think I drove them nuts with my timing of auditions in prep and takes on the shoot day, but it paid off in the end.”

The clips drive how Xfinity Mobile helps its customers avoid data charges by letting them connect the millions of 4G LTE WiFi hotspots around the country. Rolling ahead of the most popular genres on YouTube, the campaign has put prices on over 2,000 of YouTube’s most popular videos, with 4.5 million impressions to date.

The “Data in Dollars” campaign is the debut showing at Cannes for Thinking Machine, the nimble production company-slash-music house made up of Matt and Jason Docter. Their humor-forward approach was awarded with two Silver Lions for Data-Driven Targeting (Creative Data and Media Lions) and a Bronze Lion for Social – Targeted Communication (Mobile Lions), among five shortlisted entries.

View “Data in Dollars” Case Study here: https://www.dataindollars.com/