Bigfoot & Virgin Mobile have Nothing Hidden Now

Jimmy Murphy, business director, Publicis Dublin, commented, “Nothing Hidden is such a powerful proposition. It’s great when a client has a message like this that is so disruptive and compelling, it demands that you are ambitious with your creative in order to do it justice. Virgin Media is a brand that people expect to do things differently and provide entertainment and hopefully we’ve achieved both with this campaign.”

Tore Frandsen explained, “Bigfoot was a good visual representation of this idea, because for centuries people have imagined what this creature is like without ever really knowing.

Presented cinematically, the story of him coming out of hiding to mix with regular townsfolk and dispel his own myths, was one that we felt would be exciting and intriguing.”

Creating Bigfoot began with a lot of research and ended in post. It was decided that Bigfoot would be sweet, but a little weird. Terrifying wasn’t the right option at all.

“At the end of the day, Bigfoot’s just like you and me. He just wants a transparent contract and consistent reception like everyone else,” Frandsen noted.

“The actor was brought in for lots of tests throughout the development because I wanted to make sure there was plenty of expression to his face and that it didn’t just look like a mask. We were able to enhance some of the lines and wrinkles in his face with post-production VFX, helping to create a more realistic look than prosthetics alone. We also had many conversations about the texture of his fur and how tall he needed to be because we wanted him to look appropriately unkempt, huge and muscular compared to the other people in the films,” he added.

“For me, the most important thing was finding someone with amazing comedic timing. While we could have looked for someone with typical Bigfoot-like features, the reality was that we would only really be seeing the eyes and teeth beyond the prosthetics, so the acting really had to be there.”

The campaign is running for eight weeks in Ireland across TV, VOD, press, radio, online and social and is spearheaded by the TV ad which launched on Friday, September 7, during Coronation Street.