Orange Wednesdays celebrates 5th birthday

• Celebration marks 5 years of Orange Wednesdays, the 2 for 1 cinema ticket deal
• Orange Wednesdays has been enjoyed 14 million times saving Orange customers over £30 million*
• 100 members of the public are showered with gifts worth £10,000 to mark the anniversary

Orange today dropped more than a tonne of popcorn from the world’s largest bucket of popcorn at London’s iconic Tower Bridge to celebrate the 5th anniversary of its 2 for 1 cinema ticket deal, Orange Wednesdays. Orange Wednesdays has been enjoyed 14 million times since the deal was launched in 2004 saving Orange customers more than £30 million. In a celebration of the 2 for 1 offer the giant tub released the popcorn at Tower Bridge to 100 members of the British Public with more than £10,000 worth of prizes hidden inside.

The world’s largest bucket of popcorn measures in at 20ft high and took 7 days to make. Three welders, three chippies and one scenic artist from Steel Monkey created the box from scratch. The box houses over a tonne of popcorn and will be driven from Bristol to London laid flat on a truck to avoid any awkward collisions with motorway bridges.

Spencer McHugh, Brand Director at Orange commented: “Our customers love Orange Wednesdays and after five years, 14 million visits and over £30 million worth of savings, we wanted to celebrate. Popcorn and cinema goes hand in hand, so we created the world’s largest bucket of popcorn and invited 100 lucky people to our party where we showered them with £10,000 worth of gifts and popcorn.”

The popcorn box included the following prizes:

• A private drinks party and screening of the new Star Trek film for you and 50 friends. The winner can choose a further 3 friends to get an A-list experience with their own central London apartment for the night and a limousine to take them to the screening.
• A romantic weekend to Paris
• A Champneys two night spa break
• A weekend film making course
• Two Fortnum & Mason chocolate box hampers
• 80 cinema vouchers
• 10 LG Cookie mobile phones
• £10 Pay As You Go SIM Cards
• PizzaExpress vouchers.

Orange Wednesdays has resulted in up to 3 million additional annual visits to UK cinemas, adding investment and growth to the industry as well as savings for customers. The cinema is a great value night out, and now Wednesday is the most popular day of the week to go to the cinema outside of the weekend.

Orange Wednesdays is the communications company’s 2 for 1 cinema tickets deal available to all customers on their Pay As You Go, Pay Monthly, Broadband and Business packages.

Orange Wednesdays – fast facts

• Orange customers have benefited from the Orange Wednesday deal 14 million times
• Orange Wednesdays has saved Orange customers over £30 million over the past 5 years
• Up to 300,000 people benefit from half price tickets every week - filling the equivalent of 600** cinemas up and down the country
• Orange Wednesdays has resulted in up to 3 million additional annual visits to UK cinemas, making Wednesday the most popular day of the week to go to the cinema outside of the weekend
• The most popular movie to date for Orange Wednesdays was the Abba hit Mama Mia. 276,549 customers saved money for popcorn with the 2 for 1 deal
• The top 5 Orange Wednesdays customers have redeemed 2 for 1 tickets an average of 70 times each
• Roughly 85,000 customers have benefited from the Orange Wednesday PizzaExpress Partnership which launched in February equivalent to 170,000 pizzas and approximately 1.36 million doughballs.

For more information on the event, please visit www.orange.co.uk/film.

Notes to editor:

*Based on 14 million experiences and the average cost of a ticket price over 5 years minus the cost of a 35p text message. It also takes into consideration the fact that you have to pay for half a cinema ticket. ** Based on the average UK cinema of 500 seats including Odeon and UCI

For more information please contact:

Press Enquiries / Orange Holly Ferguson or Claire Timlett at M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment: Tel: 0207 544 3855 / 0207 543 4580 Email: holly.ferguson@mcsaatchi.com or claire.timlett@mcsaatchi.com

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About Orange

Orange is a key brand of the France Telecom Group, providing mobile, broadband, fixed, business and entertainment services across Europe. It is one of the world's leading telecommunications operators with more than 182 million customers on five continents.

In June, 2006, Orange became the single brand for mobile, broadband and multi-play offers. In addition, Orange Business Services became the new banner for business communications solutions. Orange Business Services is present in 166 countries with network reach in 220.

In the UK, Orange provides high quality GSM coverage to 99% of the UK population. At the end of December 2008, Orange had about 17 million customers in the UK – 15.9 million active mobile customers and over one million fixed broadband customers.

Orange and any other Orange product or service names included in this material are trade marks of Orange Personal Communications Services Limited.

Further information about Orange can be found on the Orange website at www.orange.co.uk or the France Telecom group international website at www.orange.com and www.francetelecom.com

For further information, call the Orange press office on 0870 373 1500 or email: Orangepr@golinharris.com.