O2 - XDA

O2:XDA IIi

Background

O2 originally planned to use outdoor media and TV for the launch of their new Xda IIi palm pilot. We were aware of the campaign through our day to day contact with the agency and we put forward the Evening Standard as the perfect medium to drive sales. O2 were delighted with our response to last years Scrum in the Park brief and trusted us to come back with something equally as good for this campaign.

The Implementation

Our idea was to ‘hijack’ every colour ad space within one issue of the Evening Standard and Standard Lite (Tuesday 15th February) in a bid to drive acquisition and demonstrate O2's innovation. The newspaper domination enabled the brand to deliver striking creative and drive brand awareness in an innovative and exciting way. Most importantly O2’s message was ‘providing stability in an ever changing landscape’ so to reflect this we changed the page structure of the Evening Standard. By stripping out all fractional space advertising and replacing it with nothing smaller than half pages we were able to change the reader’s perception of our pages and replicate O2’s poster campaign in print. The creative of the Xda was also shot in the style of a car ad so it was important for impact to offer standout sizes. We also suggested the distribution of a glossy wrap for added standout alongside a competition element. The 15th February was chosen to coincide with the IOC’s arrival in London to review the Olympic bid, so we were guaranteed an excellent news story and a high circulating day.

Maximum impact delivered via 'space domination'

O2's hijack of the Evening Standard was maximised by the newspapers replacement of all fractional ad spaces with half and full pages, and a DPS. Readers were also invited to enter a competition to win one of 25 Xda IIi's. This helped O2 to satisfy their campaign objectives of driving acquisition amongst business customers and SME’s, demonstrating O2’s innovation and showcasing the new product itself. The newspaper domination was also supported by online activity with www.thisislondon and the give-away of 50,000 full colour glossy wraps at mainline stations. The activity was planned and bought by Zenith Optimedia with creative from VCCP.

Results

We offered post campaign research via London Voice to test the effectiveness of the campaign on Friday 18th February. We emailed 2,282 of our panel and received a 43% response rate. 69% of the panel remembered the O2 advertising, 15% could name the product unprompted and 57% hadn’t heard of the product before seeing it in the Evening Standard. O2 were delighted with the response and we have picked up further business including the 2005 Scrum in the Park campaign.

The Evening Standard worked very closely with us to ensure that the hijack was visually as fresh and striking as it could be, while coordinating the activity with a week long XDA IIi promotion helped create the 'launch' feel we were looking for. Finally, distributing the wraps to commuters offered an experiential element to the campaign, creating a real connection with the audience and maximising its impact. We were delighted that the Evening Standard was able to work with us to create such a strong campaign across several platforms.

Andrew Niven-Press Manager | ZenithOptimedia