Circles.Life: advert-body-1 by VML

As major mobile brands across the globe announce their latest flagship phones, digital telco Circles.Life has unveiled a new campaign aimed at shifting perceptions of the mobile user experience. The campaign sheds new light on what it means to be Data Deprived, and is conceptualised from the insight that no matter how cutting-edge a new a smartphone is, it is rendered useless without enough data.

In a move to continue owning the data conversation, Circles.Life released on 7 December 2017, the Brick Phone – real bricks packaged in smartphone boxes, complete with accessories like earphones, screen protector and a SIM card extraction pin. These ‘phones’, distributed to a select list of public figures and online personalities including technology bloggers, were intended to illustrate that a new phone without sufficient data, is only as good as a brick.

To ‘un-brick’ their phones, recipients were given an additional 1GB of data per month for a lifetime and a SGD 20 discount on registration fees from a no-contract plan with Circles.Life, all in the spirit of gifting this holiday season.

Beyond sending out the Brick Phones, Circles.Life partnered with VML Singapore to launch a bogus Kickstarter page and a teaser video on the telco’s Facebook page featuring the new ‘product’. The campaign will culminate during the week of 18 December, with the full video posted on the Facebook page, parodying premium phone brand advertisements.

VML Singapore and Circles.Life worked together on the campaign, developing the strategy and creative concept, to the actual production of the bricks and content creation