The Buzz
Rostelecom
Issue 47 | June 2018
Agency
BOOTLEG (BBDO Group)
Creative Team
Creative Director Alesha Starodubov Senior Art Director Anton Chalov Senior Copywriter Nikita Nikiforov
Production Team
Producer Ekaterina Kruchkova Assistant Producer Anastasia Nikolskaya
Other Credits
Account Director Vladimir Pervozvansky Account Manager Olesya Pashina
Date
March 2018
Background
Rostelecom is the largest telecom services provider in Russia. Most people think of them in the context of long-distance phone calls but they do much, much more.
Idea
To communicate the breadth of Rostelecom services, the idea was a series of 34 10-second pre-roll ads. The clever part was that the ads ran sequentially, delivering both a story and a series of product messages about Rostelecom’s services.
While all 34 episodes were part of one big story, each short episode was connected to a specific product or service.
The placement of the ads meant that viewers could watch the episodes one by one, regardless of when and where she started browsing on YouTube.
If they were interested, they could go to The Buzz homepage and binge-watch all 34 episodes as well as find out more about Rostelecom’s products.
Results
In just the first two days of the campaign, the first five episodes had achieved 7.5 million views.
Our Thoughts
If you think of Programmatic as just an automated buy system that gets your ads in front of the right people at the right time with the right message, then you’re undervaluing it. Full marks to BOOTLEG for understanding the creative possibilities of sequential messages. Where a lot of remarketing just delivers the same ad again and again until you are spitting with fury and downloading the first adblocker you can, here’s a story that unfolds over 320 seconds. After two or three episodes people will notice what’s happening and think, hey that’s smart. Which, if you’re Rostelecom, is exactly what you want people to think. Communication isn’t just what you say but how you say it.