FREENOW: Free City

FREENOW, Europe's Mobility Super app, is being relaunched with a complete brand redesign in a through-the-line pan-European campaign, both developed by BMB - the first brand work by the creative agency to appear since winning the business in March last year.

FREENOW is Europe’s leading mobility platform providing multi-mobility services in a single app including taxis, private hire vehicles, car sharing, public transport services, e-mopeds, e-bikes and e-scooters.

BMB has created a new creative platform, called ‘Feel FREENOW’ to support this positioning. Tapping into the insight that go-getting cityholics want to experience all the exciting moments and connections that the city has to offer, without having to waste time thinking about how to get there.

A hero film, “Free City”, brings this idea to life. As FREENOW is available in many cities across Europe, BMB opted to set the film in its own world – a spectacular spinning zoetrope model, packed with vibrant, abstract representations of urban life that are instantly relatable, regardless of where the viewer comes from.

The film depicts a world where the inhabitants are stuck in a repetitive loop. The focus of the narrative is on our heroine, a woman who is roused from her loop by a notification on her phone, before going on a journey across the city, taking in all that it has to offer using a variety of FREENOW modes of transport.

The “Free City” film concludes with the brand endline and an endframe detailing the transport modes available in each country, alongside a simple articulation of FREENOW’s service: “Feel FREENOW. One app – more ways to travel.”

The Electric Theatre Collective worked with BMB on the film. The Zoetrope, which first appeared in 1934, has been used variously in film, experiential installations and music videos – but the FREENOW film is the first advertisement using the animation technique created entirely in CGI. With a stop-motion animation aesthetic, 3D body scans of actors cast for the film, are the digital characters featured in the film’s world. The result is a visual feast where the energy and diversity of each layer captures the feeling of a bustling and vibrant city.

Alongside the film, which will run on TV and VOD, BMB has created assets for radio, social media and OOH. The campaign breaks in Ireland on 6 March 2023, and the UK in April on ITV and Channel 4. The campaign will roll out through other European markets including Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and Greece in the following months – with local teams adapting the assets to suit their local market offering.