2020/2021 Winners & Shortlists

Background

Five years ago, Vodafone introduced the first Hybrid Tariff designed to cater for the needs of the youth. Competition followed, but by the time they did, the base had already changed and so it was time to revamp our portfolio. So, as the world was being forced into isolation, youth were left with no option but binge endless content. Unfortunately, the hunger for more content came with the pandemic's financial instability amidst an already struggling economy. This was our unmissable opportunity to re-connect with the youth; creating a data-based platform, Vodafone Plus which enables our consumers to customise data based on platform usage so they can optimize the value based on their interests. The platform was designed and ready to be positioned as the #1 internet destination via the value offered, diversity of offered bundles and its rightfully relevant claim of never needing to be forced offline.

Describe the strategy

TikTok was becoming the quarantine’s greatest solace, unleashing our target's inner content creator and untapped performer. So, we started the platform's kick off with a data bundle tailored for TikTok so the youth can "Binge Until (They) Drop". Staying true to our claim, we had to metaphorically unify both their offline and online worlds together whilst speaking their lingo of online trends. The easiest part is to collaborate with an influencer, so the challenge lied in partnering with a truly influential internet celebrity. Tameem Younes was the perfect piece to the puzzle, for he is known to stir social conversations with his bold content. We recreated Tameem's trendiest piece on Tiktok with a twist, to showcase how the content will always adapt to our consumers environment to never disconnecting even when they do. Extending the customized experience to our communication, we tailored our film to TikTok’s nature of vertical content.

Describe the execution

The film starts by seeing a trending TikTok video recently released by Tameem Younes, who sings about ‘how to crack an egg’ in his kitchen. By building a rotating replica of the kitchen, we see him performing the content, with the set suddenly rotating 360 degrees to add a layer of environmental difficulty. While Tameem adapts and continues naturally, we zoom out of the phone in the hands of a sleeping girl on the couch who is tossing and turning, while the content is still playing. The film was shot vertically, tailored made to TikTok while the campaign ran for 4 weeks during the COVID outbreak. The brand used this as an opportunity to hijack the platform for 4 days with visual banners and in-feed video and activate a Tiktok challenge using a branded sticker and hashtag.

List the results

#Vodafone_Plus became the most trending hashtag on Tiktok, as the film reached 56M views on TikTok and the challenge had 13K engagement submissions. According to the BMS, the campaign grabbed attention achieved branded cut through, creative uniqueness and good recall while it was also informative. Commercially, mobile internet subscription rates hit the roof shortly after the communication launch with 1.3M subscribers while TikTok marketshare by +2.5%