Priority New Year's Eve

Background

O2’s objective was to cause a buzz around the New Year’s Eve events taking place at ‘The O2’, formerly the Millennium Dome, and to draw attention to O2’s Priority Club. They wanted O2 customers to go to the Blueroom online (www.O2blueroom.co.uk) and register their details for preference-based communications.

Idea

The campaign turned every poster and press ad into a hiding place for the hottest New Year’s Eve tickets in London. By taking a picture of a Priority advert and MMS’ing it, or submitting it via an iPhone application, to a shortcode number - 63333 - O2 customers could find out whether the advert hid a ticket to The O2 party.

What happened was their photo was sent back to their mobiles but subtly changed. If they had won, the image was changed to show fireworks exploding through the door. If they were unlucky, they saw a Christmas scene through the door. This was a world first, using image recognition and processing technology to hide tickets 'virtually' in the real world.

Results

The campaign delivered far beyond its objectives. Because the technology allowed customers not only to take pictures of the billboard advertising but also adverts on the tube, in the paper, in O2 stores and even online, the Priority logo became a ‘social object’, which bloggers and customers shared and passed on. The buzz caused was phenomenal, and the site received over a 100,000 hits with over 4,500 photos submitted. The campaign also generated more than £50k’s worth of free media in print and online blogs covering both clubbing and technology news.

Target audience

London based O2 customers

Our Thoughts

What I admire about AIS’s work for O2 is how joined up it always is. Not just joined-up in the sense that print and mobile media work together, but joined up in that their ideas are both response-driven and emphatically branded. I don’t mean every poster has lots of O2 blue in it. I mean that this, and ideas like the ‘Stare Out’ campaign last year, use technology in such new and intriguing ways you can’t help feeling that Vodafone et al simply aren’t as smart, that you can genuinely do more with O2.