Furry puppets, exploding heads and oiled-up bodybuilders: Dice's new campaign is redefining live entertainment

Before Dice, fans often found themselves trapped in the endless cycle of traditional ticketing platforms, enduring the same frustrating experiences time and again. Dice, however, arrived with one simple aim: while other companies may focus on money-making, Dice wanted to look at making things easier – a lot easier.

"We brought Dice into the world to provide that alternative for fans, venues, artists and promoters because ticketing sucked for everyone and we wanted to make the live entertainment industry better for everyone," explains Patrick Duffy, Dice's executive creative director. "Our way of doing that is to make every aspect of it – finding shows, booking shows, selling tickets, inviting friends, getting into sold-out gigs – easy."

This outlook forms the heart of Dice's new Weirdly Easy campaign, a series of six campaign videos created in-house by the Dice Creative Studio, a new creative unit consisting of Patrick, a creative producer, a creative lead and two designers. Being such a small team allows Dice to work fast and collaborate with a broad range of global talent.

For the campaign specifically, the team worked with a "diverse mix of creative bods who were down with our lo-fi, alternative, blunt approach", says Patrick. This includes Hong-Kong-based director Luke Casey who helmed six videos; while South Korea-based Junwoo Park, London-based Leomi Sadler and San Francisco-based Mikey Poster were commissioned to put their illustrative stamp on a limited edition run on Weirdly Easy kits for partners and press. And last but not least, New York-based photographer Elizabeth Renstrom created still lifes for the campaign.

So what's it all about? Patrick explains that the core motivation was to disrupt the conventional narrative of the live entertainment industry. The team at Dice knew they had something remarkable in their hands when they first launched and something far from the typical ticketing platform. They wanted to convey that their platform was not just easy; it was "weirdly easy" compared to the competition. With the word "weird" in their hands, the campaign ventured into a playful and intriguing direction, leading to the creation of eccentric characters, furry puppets, exploding plasticine heads and even oiled-up bodybuilders.

The team created four films with a cast of puppets, each with a different take on the Dice brand mascot named The Fan. "We wanted weird stuff to happen, but we also wanted the films to feel relatable for fans, not just weird for the sake of it," says Patrick. Each puppet represents a different facet of The Fan's personality, contributing to the quirky and relatable vibe of the campaign.

Moments such as The Fan falling off a coffee table, ignoring a comatose co-worker, and joining a mad indie-post-punk mosh pit exemplify the blend of weirdness and authenticity that characterises the campaign.

The goal of the Weirdly Easy campaign is simple, fun and effective. "We want fans to resonate with the experience of our weird little puppets and encourage them to get out more, and we want to remind everyone that it can be this easy to find and book tickets to live shows," continues Patrick. Comedic and skillfully crafted, the campaign is a playful reminder of the impact that Dice has had on the world of ticketing. "Aside from that, my one hope for this campaign is that the Fan gets cast in their own six-season Disney series and that I get cast as their dad."