The Internet Is Mine - Proximity BBDO Brussels

Background

The internet is, by definition, a medium made by the people using it. They create content, send it to friends, they bring social platforms to life. It is a medium owned by the people for the people. Belgacom wanted to position themselves as the ‘internet authority’.

Idea

The idea of ‘owning the internet’ is fundamentally ridiculous but thanks to the internet itself anyone can get a fleeting sense of being the most important person on it. The agency took Andy Warhols aphorism about everyone wanting their five minutes of fame and brought it to life.

All you had to do was go online and click the one button on the Belgacom website. If no-one else ‘owned’ the internet at that split second, then it was yours! Your name and photo suddenly appeared in digital media all over the country, in banners, in the pitchside ads at football matches, on TV, in the streets.

People were getting up at 3am and 4am to have more chance of becoming ‘owners’.

The campaign was launched with teasers to the digital in-crowd to start a buzz going in their blogs and chats. Then banners, emails and an offline campaign drove traffic to the website.

Later, people used social media to brag about how they ‘owned the internet’ and PR in press and TV added momentum.

Results

In one week alone, 100,000 Belgians visited the website. In four weeks, the site had had 1.8m visits. Visitors came to the site literally around the clock with rates still at 1 per second between 3am and 4am. The average visit was for over five minutes.

Our Thoughts

Will Lavender, the great Australian direct marketer, once told me in a urinal that if you put the creative idea and the address panel on the same side of a postcard, your results are going to be far better than if you have these on different sides. Why? Because the one thing most people are interested in more than anything else is themselves. They seek out their names. This idea takes that fact and amplifies it 100 fold. No wonder the results were so impressive.

To get a better idea of how this campaign worked, go to www.directnewideas.com and see how they were able to demonstrate the power of the internet and give Belgacom brand leader status.