Recently Achtung! created quite an unusual campaign to communicate Vodafone’s fiber internet; in the small town of Roggel (Limburg) a real race track was laid out around the center, where celebrity Jenson Button raced his Formula 1 car against the locals – who were racing in a simulator. The entire town was involved and a documentary was made of the event. The event was to bring Vodafone and its proposition (high speed internet) as close as possible to the user. To learn more about the story behind this campaign we asked Dick Buschman, MD and Head of Strategy of Achtung!, a few questions.
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Roggel is a rustic town with only 4100 inhabitants. And this short film, directed by Andreas Pasvantis (328 Stories), wonders whether they are ready for Vodafone’s speed. Normally, you would relate this question to the speed of Vodafone’s network, but when you ask Achtung! to come up with something entertaining, you end up measuring the speed of a race car. Why? First of all, because Vodafone sponsors the McLaren team and secondly because the speed of a race car is easier to comprehend for the average consumer than the speed of a mobile network – we’d guess. So they asked Jens Button to battle against the fastest person of Roggel. A race car versus a race simulator. And to find the fastest person of Roggel, Achtung! set up some small competitions with a very local feel to subtly illustrate how Vodafone’s speed can even be experienced in the country. The Grand Prix of Roggel was ‘aired’ yesterday on RTL’s Grand Prix microsite, which today heralds “Jens Button beaten in the Grand Prix of Roggel”. You can say about it what you like, but original it is.
Just like the previous Vodafone commercial – also made by THEY – about the €2-abroad-deal (the one in the snow), this ad won’t win any prizes in Cannes – though Wouter Stoter directed a fairly sexy commercial. But speaking of Cannes; some of us used Vodafone’s €2/day-deal there and it was great. Especially when comparing it to T-Mobile; they also charges €2, only then per Mb, which now feels like going back to the Middle Ages. We’re not sure whether there’s any reception at Blue Cove (wherever it is, cause we couldn’t find it on TripAdvisor), but this commercial would definitely make us consider a switch – after all, T-Mobile even in Holland doesn’t have proper reception. So what can we learn from this; you don’t need award winning work to advertise a good product. Which is more or less the opposite of: award winning work will make a bad product fail faster – but we knew that one since Bill Bernbach was still alive.
Write the future did what most of us expected, it won big last night at the Dutch Art Director’s Club (ADCN) Awards: the Standing bulb (read: Grand Prix) and three golden bulbs (Integrated, Film, and Print/Magazine). Massive Music also won an award for the music in this commercial. Overall, TBWA\Neboko won most awards, taking home 2 golden (in Film for Pearle and in Print for Heineken’s Social Networks) and 4 silver bulbs. Live Interactive billboard (n=5) won gold in Outdoor. Bavaria’s DutchDress (Selmore) – causing such a big stir at the World Championship football last summer – also received a very deserved golden bulb in Activation. Christian Borstlap’s posters for the overview exhibition of Dutch advertising classics won gold in Graphic Design. In Interactive there was no gold. This could mean that digital creatives are still mostly tech driven, rather than aiming for the big idea. It could also mean that the ‘traditional’ creatives (the largest part of the Jury) are not able to fully appreciate digital innovations. Or it might be a bit of both. In any case, there were three silver bulbs in Interactive for Philips ‘Wake up the town‘ (Tribal DDB), Live Interactive Billboard (see above – a big digital idea, created by a ‘traditional’ agency), and Vodafone’s Madame TreSesti (Achtung!). Our very favourite film ‘Drama Queen‘ for the Young Director Award (TBWA Helsinki, directed by Rogier Hesp) got a bulb in the category Young Directors, but unfortunately not gold.
“Internet overseas. Our network is ready for it. Start your journey.” Sometimes advertising seems so simple. Or let us put it differently; some agencies can make advertising look simple. Though it helps of course that Amsterdam agency THEY was allowed to bring us good news. After all, we’ve asked ourselves for ages: ‘why don’t these assholes provide us with cheaper internet overseas’. As if they still had to ‘make’ a network in Switzerland. Vodafone has been ready for it for many years, but first they wanted to empty our pockets before introducing this new standard – €2/day, which is still ridiculous. So ironically the message reminds us that mobile providers are not to be trusted. We’re not gonna shoot the messenger, though, cause THEY did a good job in making Vodafone look attractive. The commercial, shot in St. Moritz, was directed – just like the previous commercial – by Wouter Stoter (Comrad).
“Online gaming with mobile broadband, Vodafone is ready for it” is what the voice-over tells us. We like it. Finally. In June 2009 agency THEY won the Vodafone account together with Achtung! – the latter agency was primarily responsible for the digital work. Since then Vodafone has been all over the place with its advertising – as if they were drunk during office hours. But fortunately Vodafone didn’t (only) blame their agency – after all, a client always gets the advertising it deserves. And we’re also glad to see that the brand finally found a proposition that is both relevant and executed in an attractive way. There are also two other commercials that show that if you like partying or yoga, fast internet can be handy. The commercials were directed by Wouter Stoter – whose production agency Comrad (sharing offices with CZAR) lent its building for the ‘OZAR’ party in one of the commercials. Let’s hope Vodafone stays off the booze and follows a steady course for a while.
On September 13th the World’s youngest Fomula 1 racer, Lewis Hamilton, will compete against a virtual racecar, built up from 28.800 Facebook profile photos – we’ve also uploaded our own. The question is, who will finish first; Hamilton in a racecar, on a 2.7 Km track, or the 288 MB Facebook car that will be downloaded with Vodafone’s mobile network. It wouldn’t surprise us if the Facebook car wins, since the campaign is there to display the speed of Vodafone’s new, upgraded network. According to Vodafone, it is as fast as the average computer connection. That is quite a claim. And if true, how about communicating; “Vodafone’s new network; as fast as a landline”. Anyway, if you would like to see the actual race, it will be shown live on Facebook. Created by Achtung!.
Update: Sept. 13th: Lewis Hamilton won!
Vodafone, with a seemingly unlimited budget for cross-media communication, has launched yet another online thingy. Last year Vodafone introduced Vodafone 360; the answer to how the hyper-connected consumer can manage its different online social tools, like Facebook, Twitter, etc. Vodafone 360 integrates these different platforms – making itself a one-stop shop – and asked Achtung! and THEY to explain this service in a digestible and engaging way. The agencies created Madame TreSesti (phonetic: 360), a virtual crystal gazer who knows things about your love life, your ‘online health’ and your work/life balance by ‘reading’ your different social networks – with a specially designed API. The intro, with Madame TreSesti in a mystical room, promises an interesting experience. However, when the website asked us whether we allowed Vodafone to leave branded messages on our Facebook page, we had to answer ‘no’ – we don’t want to be used as advertising dummies. So unfortunately for us it ended there and then. And that’s a pity, cause we would have loved to see how Madame TreSesti was going to visually show us our online personality by sourcing from a database of 600 different audio and video snippets – especially recorded for this campaign.
Update: Achtung! changed the settings – Vodafone won’t ask if they can use your profile for spam anymore. So we gave it a go and it’s a pretty insightful experience.
Here’s another example of Vodafone’s ‘Life Insights’ campaign – made by THEY. A campaign that revolves around insights on mobile phone usage. With these insights Vodafone creates products that match its different consumers. Last time we showed an ad that talked about accidentally sending text messages to the wrong person (read: sending dirty text messages to your grandma). This time we see a lady that angrily throws a glass of wine in your face. Why? Because 107.440 Dutch men (only men!) check sports results on their phone during a date. How rude! Although emptying a glass of wine because of that certainly isn’t normal behaviour either. In fact, if that happens, you know straight away that a relationship with this person is probably not such a good idea. So thanks to Vodafone’s thorough research, we can now get a mobile contract that allows us to find the right partner. We still like the design of these ads, for that matter.
Normally we wouldn’t have noticed this ad, but since Vodafone has surprised us many times in the past half year by introducing so many different styles of advertising, we wanted to share this one with you. Agency THEY introduced yet another visual identity for Vodafone’s communication. We like the looks of it; it is clean, designy and distinctive. If they are able to stick to it for a while, we would say it’s a keeper. However, we don’t understand it. It says: “325.205 Dutchmen have sent intimate text messages to the wrong person”. Interesting market insight, but what’s in it for us? Is Vodafone going to intercept dirty text messages to our grandmas or something? The bodycopy reads: “However you use your telephone, we have a contract that fits your behaviour. The call+text contract for example. With two times as much text messages. Handy if you need to make up with someone”. So let us get this straight. If you send your grandma a text message saying “Look forward to tonight…I’m horny as hell”, then this contract allows you to send a second text message saying: “I am so sorry grandma, that was meant for someone else”. Is that what Vodafone is trying to tell us? We’re confused. Can anyone explain?
