News 2004
Christina Aguilera stars in new TV ad for Virgin Mobile
14/05/2004
Virgin Mobile, which recently celebrated acquiring its four-millionth customer, has scored another advertising coup by filming music superstar Christina Aguilera to feature in its latest ad campaign in the UK.
The 23-year-old Grammy Award-winner is the latest high-profile musician to appear in the continuing ‘The Devil Makes Work For Idle Thumbs’ series, and follows music superstars including Busta Rhymes, Wyclef Jean and Kelis in starring in ads for Virgin Mobile.
Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson is known to be delighted to have secured Aguilera for the high-profile UK ad, which was shot in Los Angeles. The advert features Christina in a light-hearted role which sees her making fun of her own relationship with the paparazzi.
The award-winning ‘The Devil Makes Work for Idle Thumbs’ series of commercials, which have been created to promote Virgin Mobile’s 3p text rate in the UK, have portrayed various high profile stars getting up to mischief with their idle thumbs. This latest film sees Christina in a plush record company executive’s office being kept waiting, and growing increasingly bored. Her thumb idly moves to the button which operates the ‘up’ and ‘down’ motion of the chair on which she is sitting. Her rising and falling in the chair is viewed and misconstrued by construction workers on the other side of the street, who then alert the media, mistakenly thinking they have stumbled across the celebrity scoop of the year. Chaos then ensues as the media attention escalates out of control.
Ironically, in an amusing twist, real life has mimicked art, as paparazzi shots taken during filming were released prior to the film even being completed. This in turn created a media frenzy and caused false reports to be circulated that Christina was naked during filming – a bizarre parody of the actual story.
The advert has been created by Ben Priest, creative director from Rainy Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R, with media buying by MGOMD and media strategy by Good Stuff. Award winning Bryan Buckley, who co-founded Hungryman, has directed the commercial.
Buckley, named No. 1 director in the US by Creativity Magazine in 2002, has been directing commercials for ten years and has worked with some of the biggest name advertisers including Fed Ex, Dr Pepper and E Trade. He has also among others, directed ‘The Osbournes’ for Diet Coke and the ‘Butt naked boy’ commercial for Dr Pepper.
The multi-million pound ad campaign will be seen in the UK only from Monday May 17th, with the first screening on British television appearing in the 9.15pm ad break during ITV1’s Bad Girls.
