O2
THE JOY OF TEXT
SMS
A selection of campaigns transforming one of the most ordinary and overlooked channels into one of the most playful and effective.
The world's first branded upside-down SMS
SMSs hadn’t changed in 24 years. You could add a smiley face or an emoji – but that was about it. Until we created the world’s first upside-down text, and sent it to 2.8 million O2 customers.
Certain characters couldn’t be displayed properly (including ‘t’ and ‘l’), so our message had to be written without them. And bearing in mind that ‘t’ is the second most-common letter in the English language, this was no small feat…
Customers took to social media to support our ground-breaking innovation, and we made it into many ‘best April Fools’ lists, including The Drum and Shortlist.
Poetry in motion
Service communications are dull. So to mark the 21st birthday of National Poetry Day, we rewrote all O2’s automated SMS comms in the style and verse of some of the nation’s favourite poets. A first for O2. A first for the channel. And all in under 300 characters.
Geo-targeted SMSs became a variation of Rudyard Kipling’s If-. 4G tablets were upsold with a twist on Blake's The Tyger. And we rewrote The Owl and the Pussycat for our 4G sim upgrades.
Your local network
O2 customer satisfaction wasn’t as high as it should have been. So we decided to remind people of the benefits of being with O2 where they used the network most – in and around their hometown.
Our hyper-local campaign targeted 53 towns and cities. Showing over half a million customers exactly where their nearest free O2 Wifi hotspots were, reminding them how great their local 4G coverage was, and topping it all off with some quirky regional trivia. We even added a mini movie featuring the O2 cat flying over their hometown.
Our campaign single-handedly boosted O2’s customer satisfaction score by an impressive 10 points. All for just £6,000.
Awards
Shortlist
Caples / Writing for Direct
DMAs / Best Writing
DMAs / Best Use of Mobile and/or Connected Devices
Other work
