One weekend off
Issue 20 | September 2011
Agency
Mortierbrigade
Creative Team
Tim Arts and Stefan Vandenboogaard
Other Credits
Client Service Director: Veerle Devos; Strategy Director: Stephanie Zimmermann
Date
Christmas 2010
Background
Scarlet is a new and small telecom provider in Belgium. They offer TV, internet and telephony. Their target group is young families who need all three products.
Their problem was how to create brand awareness in a crowded market, with fierce competition from bigger brands with more money.
so there was opted for a direct approach via the Scarlet website.
Idea
People were asked NOT to use the Scarlet products during the Christmas weekend. If they succeeded, they could win a new TV, computer and phone. The experiment was captured on film before, during and after the Christmas weekend.
Families who entered the competition were e-mailed and phoned over the Turn-Off period. If they answered, they were out of the competition.
TV commercials ran, saying: If you signed up for the big Turn-Off and you’re watching this, you’re a loser!
Results
The campaign created a lot of awareness and sympathy for the brand. It also proved to be the ideal demo of how useful it is to people to have all three services bundled together in one.
Traffic to the website: 1,184,83 unique visitors, an increase of 68%.
73% of them were new visitors.
Our Thoughts
This is classic challenger brand tactics. Tell people NOT to use your product. Even so, it would have taken a bold client to buy this idea. But because it contains a genuine insight (namely, that most parents secretly really do believe too much TV and internet is rotting the minds of their children – and their own) it offers a tacit message that this is a brand that understands families and the paradoxes of modern life.
That sort of emotional appeal is always going to be more lasting and more binding than any message about tariffs or seasonal discounts.
Yet another great idea from mortierbrigade.