Barclays contactless campaign goes on a rollercoaster ride

Barclays contactless campaign goes on a rollercoaster ride

Barclays Bank is set to unveil a blockbuster sequel to last year's successful waterslide ad campaign for contactless payments with a new hi-tech multimedia production featuring a wild rollercoaster ride through the skycrapers of New York City.

Filmed in New York and Hollywood, the shoot for the rollercoaster advert featured a working rollercoaster cart and 40ft of track combined with complex CGI to create to help create a realistic vision of a rollercoaster weaving in and out of the city's skyscrapers. Selected streets in New York were shut down for a day to enable filming with a swinging 'Spidercam' camera to take place. The camera was created especially for the film Spiderman to achieve fast and smooth shots in between buildings.

The four week campaign launches online on YouTube and Barclaycard's facebook page on Friday 22 January with a 60-second advert. It will air on television for the first time on Saturday 24 January on ITV1. A 40-second version will be introduced after the first week. The TV activity is part of a wider campaign that will include online adverts and a social media campaign set to reach more than 10 million people using facebook as a hub for all new information about the commercial.



Following on from the success of the Waterslide iPhone game, Barclaycard says it will launch a Rollercoaster download game later in the year.

Paul Troy, head of advertising and content at Barclaycard says: "The success of our waterslide advert was absolutely fantastic and we have built upon that with Rollercoaster which is another great metaphor for how Barclaycard makes payment so simple for our customers."

Comments: (2)

A Finextra member
A Finextra member 13 January, 2010, 05:59Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up 0 likes

When did the Editorial Team at Finextra decide that acting as a PR Agency for Barclays Bank would add to the credibility of its journalism??? I personally do not give a hoot about Barclays new TV commercials. Why should I?

Paul Penrose
Paul Penrose - Finextra - London 13 January, 2010, 08:57Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up 0 likes

Actually Keith, as in all things Finextra-related we usually look to our membership for guidance on their news interests. You'll see that we made this our top story yesterday - precisely because it had picked up the most page views as the day wore on. Now you might say that reflects badly on the rest of the day's news, but it does imply that there are a fair few people out there who are interested in what Brclays is doing here. The news interest from our perspective is that Barclays - in contrast to most of its peers - is using a creative blend of media formats - including new media channels such as YouTube and facebook - to get its message across and generate interest in its brand and its efforts in the contactless arena. And it seems to be working.

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