Replace Your Voicemail Message

Background

Samusocial wanted to raise money from text donations and had set up an app which took one Euro for every SMS sent.

The problem was getting people to know about the service, given that there was no communications budget.

Idea

Samusocial invited people to replace their usual voicemail message with the plea of a homeless person for help.

Four homeless people recorded messages in which they asked listeners to text the word “donate”.

Belgium’s four largest ‘phone operators all created microsites where people could go and, with a few quick clicks, replace their voicemails with the messages from Luis, Peter and Chantal.

Results

In under 4 days, more than 280,000 people had heard Samusocial’s message.

Radio, press, TV and websites all gave the idea additional publicity.

Even the Secretary of State in charge of the fight against poverty changed her voicemail.

All in all, 31,390 Euros were raised for Samusocial, helping them provide shelter for more than 800 people per night during the cold snap of 2012.

Our Thoughts

Ringtones are an advertising opportunity these days and one which the Obama team latched onto in the last election. But so too are automated telephone responses as DRB Bank in Norway demonstrated a year ago (featured in Directory 23, https://www.directnewideas. com/magazine/?id=1016)

Now voicemail is becoming a medium in its own right. In Directory 26, if amateur photographers changed their voicemails to “Hello, I’m David Bailey” they could

win a Samsung camera. In this campaign, the voicemail takeover was altogether more startling but managed to raise quite a lot of money out of thin air.