The memorable clip of the mobile phone salesman, in his first ever audition for the TalkbackThames produced hit show Britain’s Got Talent in 2007, will appear in a television, cinema and online advertisement promoting Deutsche Telekom services (i.e. T-Mobile, T-Home) in an image campaign which is to air from the beginning of July 2008 in Germany and the United Kingdom.

Deutsche Telekom, who worked with ad agency Tribal DDB and Special Key acting as rights clearance partner for this unique campaign, were looking for a segment of historic film footage that represented the Deutsche Telekom brand promise “Life is for sharing” with direct references to real life and genuine twists of fate while evoking sincere human emotions.

Screenshot of the Deutsche Telekom spot

“The campaign commercial shows Brit Paul Potts’ emotional performance on the talent show Britain’s Got Talent. He communicates Deutsche Telekom’s new brand promise, ‘Life is for Sharing’,” explains Hans-Christian Schwingen, Head of Brand Strategy and Marketing Communication at Deutsche Telekom. “At the heart of this promise is the understanding that life holds a vast number of personal experiences large and small, that people want to share with each other”. And, Schwingen explains, Telekom’s corporate mission is to grant viewers – and hence customers – “easy access to these worlds of experience by providing the best communications and services.”

Gordon Craig, Head of Archive Sales at FremantleMedia Enterprises, uses this opportunity to explain: “The Paul Potts clip is just one of our many historic moments in television dating back nearly 40 years and is a great example of Telekom’s vision. The Archive contains a myriad of rarely seen photographs and exclusive footage which today can be licensed and utilised across many platforms - not originally possible – enhancing a brand’s awareness and positioning in today’s marketplace.”

Paul Potts realising that he won Britain's Got Talent

The true story of a mobile phone salesman who realised his dreams, coupled with the irony of him going on to star in a Telekom advertising campaign, was too good an opportunity to miss, as Hans Albers, Managing Director of Tribal DDB and one of the creative heads of this campaign, explains: “Paul Potts is more than just an unforgettably rousing Cinderella story, which also happens to be true. This is one of the most impressive examples for the power, effectiveness and importance of modern communication tools. That is exactly what we wanted to highlight – not with an imaginative fictitious ad storyline, but with a documentary taken from real life. It’s basically quite simple. And perhaps that’s why it works so well. After all, while making this project, we were fighting tears of emotion just as hard as many have done before us and many, many will do after us.”

The FremantleMedia Archive is one of the world’s greatest and most diverse television and film libraries, comprising footage and still images from Thames Television, Grundy and TalkbackThames libraries dating back to 1968. It offers unlimited ways for content users to exploit the extensive catalogue beyond conventional editorial television, both in the United Kingdom and internationally. Amongst these screen gems is the selected clip which was an exceptionally rare and captivating viewer experience. Proof of the level of engagement it achieved is evident in the viewing stats from YouTube, where the clip was viewed 26.7 million times internationally.

The 1:30-minute commercial with the slogan “Life is for sharing” (German: Erleben, was verbindet) has been on air in Germany since the beginning of July. The production of the commercial using material from Britain’s Got Talent once again shows RTL Group’s vast range of diversification options. Even though Deutsche Telekom, Tribal DDB and FremantleMedia declined to comment on the financial details of the contract.

FremantleMedia, United Kingdom