Whale Song
Issue 13 | December 2009
Agency
M&C Saatchi/Mark, Sydney
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director: Ben Welsh, Creative Director: Gavin McLeod, Creatives: Mitch Alison, Josh Rowe, Paul Carpenter, Andy Flemming
Production Team
Boffswana, Noise
Date
Launched mid-2009
Background
As Australia’s second largest telco, Optus found themselves in a market reaching saturation. The result was a vicious retail price war, cutting margins razor thin. The challenge was to make the brand stand for something again, forging an emotional connection with consumers which would encourage them to buy on more than just price. Both agency and client wanted hard evidence of the campaign’s effectiveness, so clear measures were established for site visits, interaction and positive sentiment online.
Idea
The Optus brand has a couple of core attributes, namely the regular use of animals in its communications and the word ‘yes’. We aimed to breathe new life into ‘yes’, delivering a campaign with an inspirational message: ‘When it comes to communication, anything is possible’.
The campaign was based on research from the University of Queensland, which found that whales sing complex love songs to each other.
This concept was brought to life online and visitors were invited to imagine what it would be like if they could play their own ‘whale song’. Utilizing the latest ‘Papervision3D’ technology, a lifelike whale living in an underwater world was created. Each key on the user’s keyboard could be used to play a distinct ‘whale’ sound, allowing visitors to play their own whale songs.
The website also featured the TVC, a documentary about the whale research, desktops downloads and the ability to send and share the content with friends.
Results
The website was inundated with visitors. Within days, targets were exceeded by 23% with over 88,000 visitors against a targeted 72,000. To date, total visitors have exceeded 135,000. Average time on site was over 3 minutes, with 83% of visitors interacting with the whale. Monitoring of online sentiment in social media showed it was positive 14:1.
72% of all Facebook users are said to be quite happy to have a brand ‘friend’. Why then aren’t more brands more friendly? Take the telcos of the world, most sell themselves on the numbingly rational premise of price. Cheaper calls, more texts for less, and so on. But here’s Optus setting out to create an ESP, an emotional selling proposition. The promise seems to be that if you are an Optus subscriber your phone-calls will be somehow nicer. TV and outdoor drive traffic to a website where the main objective is, simply, that you have a nice time making whale music. For me, that is friendly. And irrationally I want to sign up to Optus for no other reason than they seem …nice.Our Thoughts