With its new Solo mobile product, Bell Canada is hoping 13 to 24-year-olds will never be solo. The communications giant has just launched an innovative national campaign on August 15 that has yielded results thus far of new activations at 20% above plan, according to Stewart Ellis, managing director of Solo Mobile. The guys at Vancouver-based Rethink Advertising created buzz and excitement by positioning Solo, with its walkie-talkie capabilities connecting up to five people, as the ultimate tool for social function coordination. The funny campaign consists of – among other things – microsites that seemingly have nothing to do with Solo. Visit www.chadland.ca to get an idea. A site that pays homage to teen dream boy Chad, the Chad store button features items for sale such as Chad’s toenail clippings or sweaty towel. Scroll down further and a call to action invites you to ‘get closer to other fans and to Chad’ by buying a Solo phone. Similar sites found at www.stompball.ca and www.joinmurray.org are hoping to first, incite a laugh and secondly, foster that group communication.
‘We’re riding on the coattails of everything that’s cool [to youth]. We want to build buzz and we’re asking permission [to enter their lives] by making them laugh,’ says Anthony Thomas, AD at Rethink. ‘We’re giving youth credit with this web campaign.’ Solo’s TV spots are seeded with messages intended to drive traffic to the microsites.
‘Look for the ‘Easter egg’ within the TV spots that say ‘join murray.org‘ or in the Chad spot, you’ll see a poster in the girl’s room that reads chadland.ca,’ says Thomas. As yet another driver to the sites, 6500 wild postings are spreading across youth-oriented urban centers in Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary. The posters, which look homemade – as if a Chad fan did them, for example – are intended to ‘expose at least one person from any given group of friends to our message. Since the message is so unconventional and seemingly random in nature, we’re confident it will achieve viral status among youth,’ says Thomas.
In addition to the TV and web campaigns, expect Solo presence at youth-heavy events. Other co-promo and sponsorship deals are in the works, though details were not disclosed. According to Ellis, street teams are ‘out and about demo-ing the 10-4 [walkie-talkie] product at events. We’re looking to be strongly tied to youth interest categories like music, action sports and fashion,’ he says.
The campaign runs until the end of the year.
