Cippi

Background
Air Action Vigorsol is Italy’s most popular brand of chewing gum. Vigorsol’s advertising annually shocks and surprises, showing how the gum’s unexpected icy blast of freshness expresses itself in unexpected ways. Media agency BBH was given the brief by Perfetti van Melle – the owner of the Air Action Vigorsol - to build brand awareness and more specifically to engage with digitally literate 15 to 24 year old Italians.
A viral film was released with Cippi – a rodent with incredible farting powers given to him by the ‘fresh air explosion’ – as the hero. The campaign was extremely successful with hundreds of thousands of video views and visitors to the website. Soon after launch, copy‐cat ringtones and mobile content were released into the market forcing Vigorsol and BBH to bring their mobile plans forward – and raise their game. BBH asked Golden Gekko to develop a fun mobile application based on the Cippi character.

Solution
With this in mind, the free “Trump Selecta!” mobile application was created to ensure that young Italians could play out Cippi’s unexpected icy blast in unexpected ways. Just like Cippi his Trump Selecta had to have universal appeal;  Golden Gekko has taken up the task which resulted in creating the “Cippi the farting chipmunk”  application compatible with 85%+ of all phones in the Italian market. The application was introduced to the public in June 2007.

The functionalities of the application include:

• a timed sound joke for a friend, setting the application to countdown and making sure the “victim” is close to the handset when the fart sound is set off
• a wind chime composer, allowing to author an uncanny melody and play it back
• set of videos, ringtones and wallpapers fort he mobile phone starring Cippi
• ability to pass  the application on to friends

Result
The number of downloads from e.cippi.net and viral networks by far exceeded all expectations. The application was launched on the 21st of June 2007 in Italy and has counted over quarter of a million downloads so far with about 80% being through viral recommendations and communities. In addition to this over 100.000 ringtones, video tones and animations have been downloaded through the links in the application.

The application “Cippi’s Trump Selecta” has been awarded the following awards:

• “Immature application of the year” award in October 2007,
• BIMA Award in 2007 in the category “Best use of Mobile”
• Nominated for: The Technology Innovation Award and  The Marketing Campaign Award at the 2008 Meffys Awards.

The campaign has provided Air Action Vigorsol an undoubted recognition in the market and aside of the prizes won the liking of the public and made a truly blasting exposure of the brand to many new clients.