CONCEPT

Casumo is an online casino which needed help to create and roll out their first ever UK creative campaign in order to establish Casumo as an entertainment brand. To differentiate Casumo from the crowd, the campaign needed to focus on the art of entertaining whilst tapping into the target audience’s love of the weird and the absurd. Creative agency Kitty concepted and planned an influencer-led series of online films that championed eccentric British 'sports' across the UK and encouraged the nation to ‘Play Absurd’. Ridiculous competitive sports included pie eating, wife carrying, egg throwing and gurning. Kitty commissioned Be The Fox to produce all the films in the series that saw influencers embedding themselves within niche British communities to take on the eccentric activities.

EXECUTION

We cast Steph and Dom from Gogglebox, impersonator Scheiffer Bates, Facebook prankster Anto Sharp, The Skills Guy Joe Charman, and comedians Paul Foot, Gina Yashere, and Justin Moorhouse. All were brave enough to fully embrace the playful nature of the activities and we knew would make truly entertaining content. It was crucial to pick the right sport for the right influencer to bring out the humour and warmth in the stories fully. Paul Foot, for instance, was challenged to eat a pie as fast as possible as he was notorious in his family for his formal and slow eating.

For each absurd sport, we filmed five films which followed the influencer being tasked to discover the history of the sport, as well as attempt their own challenge in a competition that would take part in the heart of the relevant community. To ensure a sense of fun, energy and excitement ran through all elements of production and reconstruction of the competitions, members of the film team often found themselves partaking in a bit of extreme face pulling, brutal egg throwing and even hurling themselves into a bog dressed in a tiger’s suit.

The sports took us to far-flung spots of the country, and kit often had to be stripped down to cross the rugged terrain. Shot on an FS7, we frequently used a Ronin to ensure we smoothly captured the fast pace of the activities at a high quality. Drones and unusually positioned GoPros were used to provide variety and texture and draw out the beauty of the epic local landscapes. We pastiched films such as Rocky and Gladiator that we knew the target audience had an affinity for and would recognise, filming at a high frame rate so that we could slow the footage to accentuate the hilarity of the scenarios in the edit. This approach continued into the grade with the use of effects such as exaggerated blurring and back-in-time sepia, again playing to our target audience’s sense of humour.

The films had a staggered release across the influencers’ social channels and the brand's Play Absurd website. 35 in total were produced over a seven-month period. The staggered release meant we were able to work with Kitty to use audience engagement analytics tracked by Casumo to inform future productions of the next set of films in the series – tweaking aspects such as film duration and when to ‘reveal’ the influencer’s sport.

RESULTS

Brand awareness and revenue sky-rocketed. Total reach was 3.9m, views reached 891k, with impressions at 8.1 million. Average time spent on the campaign Play Absurd website was 3m 48s and 70% of viewers watched films to the end.