The Party Starter
- Brand
- Vodafone
- Year
- 2012
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Tech & Telecom
- Mechanic
- Music & Rhythm
- Platform
- App
- Agency
- Big Orange
- With
- B-Lex
Objective
As principal sponsor of ID&T's flagship festivals, Vodafone Nederland wanted more from the deal than a logo on the fence — a direct line to the young festival crowd it was funding. The Party Starter gave that audience a reason to keep engaging with the brand through the nine-week run-up to Sensation, Welcome To The Future and Mysteryland, dangling the one prize this crowd actually wanted — tickets to sold-out shows — while folding in Vodafone's own music and mobile perks along the way.
Solution
Players download the free app, pick the track for their festival, and put the phone away from the screen — it's now a motion controller. As the festival-branded song plays, they dance with the phone in hand while the built-in accelerometer reads their movement and scores how well they hold the rhythm. The twist is that skill isn't the point: the app keeps a running clock on total dance time, and every session tops up that tally. Whoever has racked up the most cumulative dance hours by the end of the day sits atop the leaderboard and wins a ticket to the corresponding sold-out ID&T festival.
Results
34,000 downloads produced 86,000 play sessions, averaging 20 minutes per download, with 70,000+ of those sessions coming during the Mysteryland and Welcome To The Future festivals alone. Combined, players logged roughly 11,774 hours of dancing, and the top competitor danced 137 hours and 16 minutes to outlast more than 10,000 other participants.
- 1
The player finds the game through a promo landing page and downloads the free app from the store, first on Android and later on iPhone.
- 2
On opening, the app frames itself as a warm-up for named ID&T festivals, with a separate music track composed for each festival's theme.
- 3
The player holds the phone and dances or shakes it in time with the playing track; the phone's motion sensor reads the movement and the app gives immediate feedback on how well the player is hitting the rhythm.
- 4
Dancing accurately to the beat earns the player time and points toward their running total.
- 5
The real test is stamina rather than precision: the app measures how long the player can keep dancing without stopping, and sessions can run for long stretches.
- 6
Dancing alongside friends earns bonus points and speeds up reward progress.
- 7
Accumulated dance time places the player on a leaderboard against thousands of other competitors.
- 8
Each day of the nine-week campaign, whoever danced longest wins a free ticket to a sold-out ID&T festival.
- 9
Beyond tickets, players can also earn smaller rewards such as music tracks, ringtones, podcasts, and prepaid message bundles.
