Just found a balloon of a Racoon on Faris Yakob’s blog. Clicking through I discovered this upcoming campaign for Orange in the UK.

Poke are responsible [again]. They keep turning out great work for Orange and this looks like another online masterpiece.

What I’ve gleaned from a brief play is, its a balloon race across the internet! What does this actually mean though?

Well it seems that you participate in two ways;
1. As a site owner, embeding code (see floating Racoon bottom left of this page) to track passing balloons (aka site visitors)
2. A balloon owner, whom by visiting participating sites (like this one, and Faris’) can increase their balloon miles. I’d imagine that a media buy on major sites will feature banners that track ‘balloon miles’ too, so you can crank up your mileage.

Why participate? The balloon that flies the furthest wins an £18,000 holiday to Ibiza for themselves and 7 mates – plus other stuff, probably phones. Plus the fact that the idea is brilliant and you simply want to see how far you can go – wouldn’t you?

I’m facinated to see how this is actually going to rollout… page to page, site to site. Below is the personal widget you get once you get your balloon. This can be installed on everything from a social profile on Facebook, to your very own blog. I chose a Racoon, ultimately this is a far cooler animal than a dolphin, camel (or the other one). But I guess my ‘balloon miles’ will be recorded here for all to see… fingers crossed.

Get yourself a balloon and lets race!