Telco, TalkTalk, is continuing its sponsorship of The X Factor for the tenth year. As if that wasn’t enough pressure on agency, CHI&Partners, to keep its creative fresh, the old creative, the user-generated idents, FX Star, have been inordinately popular.
David Parslow, TalkTalk marketing director, commented: “The TalkTalk X Factor ad breaks have become so iconic to the point that they’re almost synonymous with the show. Over the years we’ve helped hundreds of fans appear on TV, given away thousands of money-can’t-buy prizes and delighted thousands of TalkTalk customers with tickets to the show – giving fans the chance to see their favourite acts, judges and presenters live in action.”
So, this year, CHI&Partners has given them a twist. The idents will now feature performances created at home by X Factor fans, using TalkTalk’s new FX Star app.
FX Star allows users to create their own music videos, lip-syncing along to their favourite tracks, and adding a splash of glamour or comedy to their performances with fun filters such as Apple Head, Party Paint, Comic Book, Glam Rock, Teddy Boys or Flower Power.
The best videos to be submitted by the general public each week will then be selected to air on TV during The X Factor ad breaks.
The app, which was designed and built by CHI&Partners and MPC Creative, launches in the App Store and Google Play this weekend, with five filters and three tracks – Zara Larsson’s Lush Life, Sigala’s Give Me Your Love, Birdy’s Wild Horses.
It allows groups of up to four people to feature in the same music video. So users can create and submit thousands of different combinations in a bid to star on TV.
Jim Bolton, deputy executive creative director at CHI&Partners, noted, “TalkTalk has brought some great user-generated content to the big screen over the past ten years. We wanted to build on that and make this year’s X Factor sponsorship big, special and memorable. Filters deserve to be shared and extended to the TV platform – after all, who doesn’t want to be a comic book character singing Zara Larsson’s ‘Lush Life’ with their mum and dad?”
Credits:
Agency: CHI&Partners
Executive creative director: Jonathan Burley
Creative partner: Micky Tudor
Creative director: Jim Bolton
Creative: Ben Da Costa
Executive producer: David Jones
Producer: Andy Roberts
Executive digital director: Stuart Holton
Digital producer: Gary Serradinho
Production assistant: Alfie Glover-Short
Creative Producer: Ruby Hill
Chief executive officer: Nick Howarth
Chief strategy officer: Neil Goodlad
Planners: Simon Ringshall & Katherine Barnett
Business director: Tom McCoy
Account director: Freddie Eaves
Digital/app production: MPC Creative
Executive producer: Dan Phillips
Interactive creative director: Andre Assalino
Lead producer: Joana Flor
Senior digital producer: Joana Guimaraes
VFX Company: MPC
Music company: Wake the Town
Audio: Scramble Soho Limited
