O2 - Homezone
O2:Homezone
Objective
After listening to their brief we put our thinking caps on and decided to offer Londoners the chance to build their own house - a cardboard one!
We came up with the idea of a house shaped cardboard insert to creatively engage the consumer and raise awareness. We believed that this was an interesting creative concept that ideally raised awareness of the client's key message and value.
We settled on a creative concept which consisted of distributing 100,000 onserts (inserts which sit on the outside of a polybagged magazine) in Central London. The onsert was a die-cut cardboard O2 branded house which readers were able to build, thus creating their own 02 home.
The creative execution gained high standout with the key affluent consumers and both the client and agency were delighted. This campaign was solus with the Evening Standard.
This execution brought the Homezone message to life and gained high standout with key consumers.
Nick Burcher | ZenithOptimedia
The Campaign
O2 wanted to reach Londoners in a ‘different’, ‘clever’ and ‘exciting’ way to promote their ‘Happy Hour’ campaign and create a ‘buzz’.
They wanted to raise their profile within the lucrative London marketplace.
The premise of ‘Happy Hour’ is that potential/existing O2 customers can text any network free of charge between 7-8pm. They can also travel free in an O2 livery wrapped cab within this time period (if they could manage to flag one down!)
They were also using television, radio and outdoor advertising so our ideas had to complement their schedule.
Our Proposal
The premise of Happy Hour is to get value for money. O2 were demonstrating this by providing free text messages. The best way that we could integrate the concept of value was to provide our newspaper free to targeted Londoners in exactly the same time frame that the client was operating within - in other words we were replicating the added value that O2 were offering. This work was supported by the TV watermark strip
- A targeted - by geography and demography - four page glossy newspaper wrap around the Evening Standard
- Display advertising within the Evening Standard with a London focused message
- A ‘watermark’ behind the 7-8pm time slot on the Evening Standard TV listings page with the message ‘O2 Happy Hour’ - a media first
We believed that these suggestions would be an ideal way for O2 to reach a fast moving, cash rich time poor London audience in an interesting and innovative way.
These solutions met O2’s needs in the following way: -
- O2 benefit from the brand values of the Evening Standard - wraps are an ideal way to create an interesting advertorial whilst ‘hijacking’ the front page of the paper
- It created a big splash in London
- It complemented their outdoor advertising
- It hit the right demographic at the right time of day -timing is everything
The Challenge
Historically wraps can only be given out in the earlier part of the day to avoid key vendor times but to tie in with the O2 strategy we broke our own house rules and offered the opportunity to distribute 7-8pm to highlight their ‘Happy Hour’. We knew that they wanted to reach a key ‘young’ demographic for their unique campaign so the location that the wraps were given out at was critical to the promotions success.
We suggested key London stations, the streets of the West End and Soho and outside London colleges. It was agreed that people who were seen to have mobile phones would be targeted. O2 were happy with these suggestions so we then had to ‘sell’ the idea to our circulation department. After much wrangling both the 7-8pm time slot was agreed alongside our desired locations.
Alongside this O2 wanted to take us up on our television page idea - the basic premise was to colour wash the 7-8pm time slot with the words ‘O2 Happy Hour’. This was an even harder internal ‘sell’ for us than the wrap idea because we had to approach our editor, Veronica Wadley, for permission to ‘alter’ the look of the page. The editorial department are notoriously protective of the product and commercial ideas are often lost along the way due to the protection of editorial integrity. We truly believed that this was a fantastic idea for O2 without damaging the product or diminishing it's integrity in any way - eventually our editor came round to our way of thinking and the idea was put into practice and was a media first.
The Final Product
- 200k copies of the Evening Standard were wrapped in a four page glossy O2 ad - these were handed out free during the 7-8pm Happy Hour in central London by 100 people each day for five days
- Display activity in the newspaper ran for a week to support this - while O2 also occupied the 7-8pm slot in the Evening Standard's TV listings guide - the first time that such a piece was carried
This proposal saw us provide an integrated, unusual and effective way of telling London consumers about O2's offer of free texts for six months between 7pm and 8pm for those signing up to O2 in the London area.
The Result
We illustrated how newspapers can drive spontaneous brand awareness through dramatising the offering in a timely and targeted way. The relationship with the client was cemented and we are now perceived as a title who is set apart from the rest of the pack, is cutting edge and can produce top quality results in a professional manner. Quite simply in the eyes of O2 we have gone from being an ‘also ran’ to a being a prime advertiser - in fact they have described us as their ‘favourite’ newspaper team to work with.
We achieved 100% of their objective and the campaign is still running within the London marketplace.
We are delighted that a relatively small budget can result in such an innovative solution. It clearly captured the motivation for the campaign and delivered exactly what we wanted.
Tom Sutton - Head of Advertising | O2
This was a great example of a unique client business initiative being communicated through an innovative and perfect vehicle to maximise impact. All parties involved client, ZenithOptimedia, PHD and the Evening Standard worked together to develop this media first.
Stuart Mays - Buying Director | ZenithOptimedia
Summary
We believe that the Evening Standard demonstrated exceptional insight into our client’s needs and produced outstanding, quality results which have both raised awareness of the product within the London marketplace as well as forging an excellent relationship with both O2 and ZenithOptimedia.
