Skype brings two needles from different haystacks together

Okay, you may call it cheesy, easy or diddly as a story, but have a look at the film that Skype aired about Denis, who is separated form his Ugandan family. He misses his adoptive son, wife and rest of the family, living in the USA and brings them as close as possible at home while being separated at the same time. The concept perfectly suits the service Skype is offering, and visualizes the hero status for the brand that solves a family problem. It all feels like a perfect fit, you just have to buy a beamer.

The “Stay Together” storytelling campaign was launched with this beautifully executed film. A call for entries made 1000 stories flow in the direction of Skype and showed great engagement rates. Asking the question ‘Can true friends stay close from opposite ends of the earth?’ was enough to mobilize many people. From that moment of it was just cherrypicking.

The powerful way the brand is interwoven with the story makes this campaign a great claim for the future: when separated, call Skype. The narrative that is used takes the campaign away from the overdirected traditions of advertising and make the documentary part take over the complete series, without the car steering off the circuit.

Knowing the huge popularity documentary film is experiencing since a decade (opposite to documentary photography, which is searching for new relevance and podia), makes this choice a smart strategic move with great concept and execution. Just using a beamer at their homes brought the concept to life and produced great photography.

So Kudos to Skype and their agency Pereira & O’Dell’s. "The moment that the girls with one arm meet, that wasn't planned," CCO Pereira said about bringing together two friends that have been chatting online for years but never met, "we didn't know what was going to happen. The moment that one gets out of the van and they see each other, after talking for years and years and years. Then they run up and hug each other. We were like: 'Whoah, this is real. You can't make this up”. See the video here.

Let’s hope advertising uses the storytelling phenomenon to their best advantage to get rid of the polished image that got in the way of connecting to peoples lives. ‘Skype Stay Together’ is a great showcase for that purpose.

ADD.: A week after pblishing the link of the complete 'showcase', above, Skype decided to set the video's in 'private' mode, for whatever reason. The project information in text on the same page is still visible, though we decided to keep it in. All the movies exept the one armed girls are on the Vimeo Triggertales page.