Could #phonies sort of be the new #selfies? You never know, they seem to be catching on!

We wanted a quick, low-cost, fun way of promoting the HTC One mini 2 that we launched for the mobile brand last month.

So we came up with the idea of the #phonie – or using your handset to make yourself look like someone you clearly aren’t (and who is probably more famous than you are).

To make the idea real, we worked with agency friend and sometime collaborator, the Instagram star who is Dan Rubin to hit the streets of London armed with nothing but a couple of handsets with some pre-loaded famous faces and bags of enthusiasm.

So it was that various members of the public were coerced into posting for Dan’s lens as we captured their celebrity alter-egos using nothing but a spot of creative wit and the mobile handset in question.

To date, we’ve nailed coverage across the Daily Telegraph (who did us a splendid gallery) and Buzzfeed‘s celeb pages.

Then the whole thing has gone a bit global, as there has been coverage from Peru to France, Germany to the States. Stuff like the French MeltyStyle, TUX, and Feel Desain, Beautiful Decay and TrendHunter in the US, ShinyShiny, FastCoCreate, Photography Monthly, Soura, BT.com, MeltyBuzz, Gizmodo chipped in with Germany’s representation, Piwee, Pousta, grafikeler, Check This Out, Distractify, Il Etait Une Pub, smthng, Steal, while Modernism meant we got to Romania.