The Free Mobile love rocket.
On the 13th of december, 2011, Xavier Niel, Free/Iliad founder tweeted:
“The rocket is on the launchpad”
Free, a French ISP was rumored to launch a new cellphone carrier offer and operator in France, with a disruptive and cheap business model.
A viral strom ensued
Everybody was chatting about that mysterious rocket and cryptic meme.
Later an engineer working for Scaleway/Online.fr, an Iliad subsidiary company posted an ascii-art rocket displaying a md5 hash ( which decoded to “jenesaispas”/”I don’t know”).
/\
/''\
/ \
/ \
/ \
/ \
'------------'
|__________|
/----e\----\
/| f| |\
//|____b|____|\\
// | 7| | \\
/ | |___9|___| | \
| | '._2|_.' | |
| | |_9|_| | |
| | .' e| '. | |
| | / 6| \ | |
| || a| || |
| || 5| || |
| | \ b| / | |
| | '. _7|_ .' | |
| | _ d| _ | |
| |/ \_.'c|'._/ \| |
| || |_.'c|'._| || |
| |\_/ '.6|.' \_/| |
| | _e|_ | |
/| | .' b| '. | |\
/ '.| / b| \ |.' \
/ ||| 7| ||| \
/ ||| 9| ||| \
/ || \ a| / || \
/____/\||__'. _a|_ .'__||/\____\
/_ |_.--^--3|--^--._| _\
/ / .'/_'''c|'''_\'. \ \
/ / / /___4|___\ \ \ \
| / / /__5|__\ \ \ |
\/ / | a| | \ \/
/.'/ \__/ f| \__/ '.\
// \__ __/1|\__ __/ \\
__//_ \__/ __3|__ \__/ _\\__
'=====' '======' 1337 '====='The meme got more traction.
Uncalculated moves can have uncalculated consequences.
The launching date was approaching, it was friday 6th, 2012, and I had some time to spare on rocket design.
So I decided to push a blind Konami Code launched rocket on the free.fr homepage.
The code was launching a pixel-art flying rocket animation overlay with the “Love Boat” TV show anthem sounding in the background.
The week-end passed and the next monday, two majors french newspaper had it plastered on their first page! ( “Libération” and “La Tribune” )
It had blown up during the week-end.
This even triggered a legal debate if using this meme and viral marketing wasn’t a distortion of concurrence rules under the french law, because after all, this was advertising, but Free 😉
Anyway that was hilarious.
