How To… Keep An Urban Snowman Alive

 Question: how do you go from this... 

...to this?

The journey is a long one, fraught with danger, despair and plenty of damp clothing.

It all started six weeks ago when the whole of BBD Perfect Storm was invited to pitch an idea for Christmas. DeFrosty won by the peel of his carrot, and then the realisation started to sink in that we’d actually have to work out how to bring our cool new friend to life. 

What was initially a simple idea – tweet to keep our office snowman alive and raise money for a local children’s hospital – quickly became a logistical nightmare that demanded the best from 28 seasoned professionals. 

At the end of the day though, we wanted to prove that 2016 hadn’t killed all of the country’s goodwill. That’s why we asked London to tweet to keep the spirit of Christmas alive and – ultimately – stop DeFrosty the Snowman from becoming DeFrosty the puddle. 

Stage one – Is it actually possible?

Well, who doesn’t like a challenge? We quickly discovered that turning a freezer on and off by social media activity was achievable. We were then dealt our first big win early on when our building management company got on-board and let us use an abandoned shop-front just next door. All of a sudden, what was initially quite a small idea involving a freezer and a web-cam in our office, became something much larger out in the public domain. We now knew we had to pull all the stops out, even if it meant wearing ski gloves and navigating a building site every day.

Stage two – Where exactly do you buy snow in central London?

With DeFrosty’s apartment for the next month leased, the next step was the simple matter of building a real-life snowman on Old Street. Amazingly, there are whole companies dedicated to this exact form of madcap snow topiary, and we quickly made contact with the brilliantly-named Snow Business. They arranged eight packing crates of real snow and an expert mould.

Stage three – What if none of the freezers on Gumtree can already be powered by tweets?

Annoyingly, we were unable to buy a freezer direct from Elon Musk, so had to settle for an ancient model previously owned by Birds Eye. With the freezer in place – and upcycled in futuristic (and mildly hallucinogenic) silver spray-paint – it was the turn of the entire digital department to earn their spurs. We programmed a so-called ‘smart plug’ to control the power going to the freezer, and set up a local wi-fi network around DeFrosty so that the plug could react to mentions of our hashtag on Twitter.

Stage four – Is it morally acceptable to lock a snowman in a freezer?

I think that’s a subject for a separate article. Suffice to say though that DeFrosty became well-versed in the writing of Jean-Paul Sartre during his sojourn.

Problem five – What if no one tweets?

We couldn’t let that happen, not with DeFrosty’s life at stake. And especially not when local charity, Evelina London Children’s Hospital, were counting on us to help raise money to give some of their kids the Christmas they deserve. We worked out a mechanic so that every tweet of #KeepDeFrostyAlive would power his freezer for 10 minutes, and per tweet, we’d also donate 10p to Evelina London.

We then dressed up DeFrosty’s window with a specially-commissioned illustration by Pen Behaving Badly and let DeFrosty take over our own Twitter feed, contacting local businesses and keeping conversations going with passers-by who tweeted to save him. 

Within the first two weeks there have been almost 1,000 mentions of the hashtag, and DeFrosty is still going strong… although maybe not quite in the best condition for a fashion shoot.

A few final dos and don’ts 

DO buy organic carrots. They stay orange for longer.

DON’T judge him on the size of his family jewels. Remember that it’s very cold in there.

DO buy him a snowball if you’re in Clerkenwell Grind this week.

DON’T hum ‘Ice Ice Baby’ in his earshot. He much prefers ‘Informer’ by Snow. 

DO tweet #KeepDeFrostyAlive and keep him in one piece until Friday December 23!