We built an enormous AT-AT with Colin Furze in someone’s back garden
This project was a childhood dream come true, but its impact commercially was also massive for eBay (but you’ll find all that in the ‘Serious Business’ bit). While every other retailer was trying to outdo John Lewis on the sentimentality, we proposed addressing what Christmas is really all about …a new Star Wars movie: in this instance ‘Rogue One’.
So we told eBay that they should help YouTuber Colin Furze surprise his biggest fan by building an enormous Imperial Walker in their back garden. Little did we know that our client, and most of eBay’s senior management were hardcore Star Wars geeks, everyone wanted this to happen. But we also had to convince Disney and then Lucas Film that this was a good idea.They could not have been more supportive and we were told that even Kathleen Kennedy herself saw & signed off on the project.
The result was a film that got onto every website we could have wished for, call from Jamie Oliver’s agent to see whether he could get one for his garden and one very happy little boy.
The objective of this project was to continue the strategy of ‘Remarkable Builds’ with something truly epic. But what it ended up laying the foundations for was the beginning of a remarkable commercial partnership between two of the most iconic global brands: eBay & Disney.