The marketing challenge and brand insight:
Despite an innovative and competitive
offering, T-Mobile had fallen behind its competitors. People simply
didn't know what the brand stood for. The old model of advertising
new tariffs just wasn't working; we had less money than our
competitors, and our advertising wasn't cutting through.
We needed a fresh approach that would
create some excitement around T-Mobile, get people talking about
the brand; win back some customers; and launch the brand
positioning: 'Life's for Sharing'.
The consumer insight and communications strategy:
If you ask people what they love about
having a mobile phone, they constantly talk about being able to
share interesting or unexpected things that happen to them in their
everyday lives - by calling, or texting, or, as increasingly
happens, recording and passing-on photos or video clips.
So we decided to create an event that
would provide content that embodies 'Life's for Sharing', create
such excitement that people would share it; and ultimately, make
great advertising. Additionally, we wanted to build a community
around this content, and make it easy to share using digital and
social networks.
What better activity to get people
involved than dancing - anyone can do it, it's infectious, it's
great to watch when pros do it, and better to watch when people
with two left feet try. What better medium than YouTube for us to
partner with to provide a platform for people to share the
content.
The creativity of the communication and activation:
The event featured 350 dancers who
startled commuters at Liverpool Street station by breaking into a
choreographed routine, hundreds of people couldn't help joining in.
On the day of the event we set up a Life's for Sharing channel on
YouTube. Soon after the event, footage was making its way on to
YouTube, as people shared the surprise with their mates and anyone
else who wanted to watch. We created a film of the event which
premiered on TV just 36 hours after the shoot. Our 2½ minute film
ran during Celebrity Big Brother and was introduced from within the
programming by the announcer, which increased the sense of "event".
The end-frame of the film directed viewers not to T-Mobile's
webstore, as was usual for their advertising, but to the YouTube
channel. This ignited the viral spread of the campaign. The channel
quickly became a busy home for user generated content, as many
people spoofed our film recreating the dance event in other
unexpected places.
We also slow-released more content to
the site including celebrities doing the T-Mobile dance and a
"making of" video, ensuring there would be plenty of reasons to
keep coming back to the channel. We used global-first aggregator
technology which pulled the best, worst and weirdest dance clips
from across the whole of YouTube to our channel, further enriching
the content. We also seeded the digital content out to bloggers,
who helped drive record-breaking views of the video on a global
basis.
The results:
Viewing increased during our TV film
premiere from 3 to 3.5 million. The film has been watched on
YouTube over 12 million times with nearly 12,000 comments from
consumers.
Our sponsored channel is the most
viewed in the UK of all time, and the second most viewed globally.
There are now more than 50 Dance Facebook groups, the largest of
which has over 4,600 members. With 95,000 downloads in just two
weeks, it was the most popular outdoor Bluetooth campaign to date.
Search volumes on "T-Mobile" went up by 38% during the campaign.
From campaign launch, T-Mobile's word of mouth tracking more than
doubled, making it the category leader.
Most importantly, in a year when
national high street sales were at an all time low, T-Mobile stores
received record footfall. Handset sales went up 22% during launch
week. In the height of a recession T-Mobile sales grew a massive
52% on the same time the previous year. 80% of these were at the
intended top end of the market who spend more than £30 a month.