Telecoms provider has launched “Future Timeline”, a future-gazing app which predicts the year ahead for O2 customers using their Facebook timelines.
Former footballer Ian Wright has been signed up by the network to promote the app which has been created to showcase O2’s Pay & Go Go Go tariff, which rewards customers the longer they stay on it.
Developed by R/GA and set to be delivered by O2’s in-house team along with Hope & Glory and Newcast, Future Timeline creates a personal Facebook timeline for anyone who uses it, predicting their status posts for the year ahead based on existing timeline content and bringing them to life.
Existing updates are used to create “ideal futures” which can range from dates with a user’s celebrity crush to trips abroad and their favourite football team winning the Premier League.
Former Arsenal front man, now football presenter and pundit, Ian Wright has been brought in to help Facebook fans imagine a better future. Wright fronts the ‘O2 Future News’, a series of video clips which predict imaginary sporting happenings.
The news broadcasts will feature within the app and on the O2 Future News YouTube channel. Speaking of his involvement Wright said: “I channelled the energy of Will Ferrell, Sir Trevor McDonald and Des Lynam to become the news anchor of the O2 Future News. By future gazing we have made the fantasy of sport even more fantastical.”
According to O2 the network predicts a high profile Future Timeline showbiz correspondent will be revealed in the near future.
Head of social media at O2, Paul Faberetti, added: “At the heart of this idea are two of our essential social media pillars - relevance and value. From our insights, we found that Facebook is the ideal channel to reach a Pay & Go audience with the message that our tariff gets better with time.
“This is the first time that marketing on this scale has created a campaign that could deliver a different experience for every person who sees it, each tailored to their Facebook interests. As a result, there are literally millions of permutations of the content that we’ve created, with hundreds of future-gazing posts in O2 Future Timeline.”