Cellular service provider Koodo is encouraging Canadians to wrestle their way out of contract headlocks with a new campaign promoting its Tab feature.

Launched last month, the effort developed by Toronto-based Taxi 2 with media handled by Toronto-based Media Experts, features a new Koodo character, the masked mobile revolutionary El Tabador. The animated Lucha Libre fighter promotes the telco’s $0 Tab offering – a phone without a fixed-term contract – through cinema and TV spots, online content and a game, wild postings, TSAs and OOH ads with the tagline ‘Tab in for phone freedom.’ One billboard is encased in a cage, with a leaping El Tabador prompting people to ‘challenge contracts to a cage match.’

Koodo wanted to highlight its Tab as a point of differentiation for Canadians fed up with fixed contracts – namely, that the tag team of $0 dollar phones and no accompanying contract can’t be beat. Taxi 2 saw El Tabador as the best character to lead the revolution for ‘phone freedom,’ explains Lance Martin, ECD at Taxi 2.

‘We started talking about revolutions and we came up with the whole ‘Tab in for phone freedom’ notion, and [El Tabador] just naturally developed.’

In one TV spot the little luchador announces to the townspeople of his small Mexican village that he is off to fulfill his destiny as the champion in the fight for phone freedom, stopping people from being lured by the promise of $0 phones, only to become trapped in an evil contract submission hold.

Koodo’s scrappy effort, which still features campaign constants like vibrant colours, a cheeky tone and a value brand positioning, will remain in market until May.