The new advert highlights outdated silly rules – like Freemen supposedly still being allowed to drive geese through the Square Mile! T-Mobile recruited City Freeman, Benjamin Browning, plus a team of geese wranglers to guide more than 100 geese along Cheapside. It is thought to be one of the largest flocks ushered through the City since Old Smithfield Livestock Market closed down around 1852.
The geese brought the streets to a standstill with passers-by stopping to take photographs and film videos. Some even helped shoo a few wayward birds on their way.
Lysa Hardy, head of brand and communications at T-Mobile UK, said: “Our latest campaign looks at some of the silly rules still in existence as a means of highlighting some of the outdated thinking of the mobile industry that we’re challenging with our latest offers. And in what has become a T-Mobile tradition, the filming has created an unexpected, wonderful and exciting spectacle that prompted people to join in and share.”
Browning, who in addition to being a Freeman also breeds poultry, said: “As a Freeman and a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Poulters, it was an honour to exercise my historic right to drive geese through the City’s streets. People seemed surprised to see so many geese in the centre of London; it was a lot of fun seeing the looks on their faces!”
This isn’t the first time a T-Mobile advert dramatising its Life’s for Sharing strapline has caused a sensation in the capital. Last January, the mobile operator staged an impromptu dance with 300 dancers at Liverpool Street Station. The ad went on to be an internet phenomenon, attracting over 17 million views on YouTube. And in April, 13,000 people congregated in Trafalgar Square for a mass sing-along with pop star, Pink.
T-Mobile’s Geese advert is set to hit TV screens on 15 February.