Indiantelevision.com Team

(1 February 2010 5:50 pm)

MUMBAI: Barclaycard, which is part of Barclays Global Retail Banking division, has launched the sequel to its waterslide commercial.

The new ad tells the story of an even more adventurous and innovative commute to work - on a rollercoaster. The 60 second rollercoaster ride brings to life Barclaycard’s mission of making its customers’ (both retailers and consumers) lives easier through contactless payment technology.

Rollercoaster takes forward the successful features of Waterslide, using a story of one character’s journey to work to promote the ease of using a Barclaycard. The advert begins with the character standing at the lift doors of his apartment block when a rollercoaster pulls up and takes him on a wonderfully smooth and liberating journey high above the clutter and congestion of the city below, only slowing slightly when he makes a contactless payment at the bakery en route to work.

Filmed in New York and Hollywood, the rollercoaster advert has been the most technical and complicated shoot to date in Barclaycard’s celebrated history of advertising. Utilising a real rollercoaster cart and 40 ft of working track, the ad also features the first use of the ’Spidercam’ in an advert since the camera was developed to film parts of the ’Spiderman’ movies and complex CGI to help create a realistic vision of a rollercoaster weaving in and out of the city’s skyscrapers.

The four-week campaign launched online on YouTube and Barclaycard’s Facebook page on 22 January with a 60-second advert and aired on television for the first time two days later. A 40-second version was introduced after the first week. The TV activity is part of a wider campaign that will include online adverts and a social media campaign set to reach more than 10 million people using the Barclaycard Facebook page as a hub for all new information about the commercial.

Following on from the success of the Waterslide iPhone game, Barclaycard will launch a Rollercoaster download game later in the year.

Contactless payment technology was pioneered by Barclaycard in the UK in 2007 with the launch of Barclaycard OnePulse. Now, all Platinum, Gold and Classic Barclaycards are issued with contactless technology and over five million are in circulation in the UK. Over 20,000 retailers now accept contactless payments throughout the UK.

Created by leading advertising agency BBH and directed by Nicolai Fuglsig, the commercial is designed to bring to life Barclaycard’s vision of a world where payments are simple and stress free.

Barclaycard head of advertising and content Paul Troy says, "The success of our waterslide advert was absolutely fantastic and we have built upon that with ’Rollercoaster’ which is another great metaphor for how Barclaycard makes payment so simple for our customers. It again breaks boundaries for Barclaycard and is the most technically advanced commercial we have ever filmed."