Media > Campaign

MAGENTA UNLEASHED

SAATCHI & SAATCHI, London / DEUTSCHE TELEKOM / 2017

Awards:

Shortlisted Cannes Lions
CampaignCampaign(opens in a new tab)
Supporting Images
Supporting Images
Case Film

Overview

Credits

Overview

CampaignDescription

Through a simple chroma-key AR app, everything magenta became an owned media channel through which we could take advantage of Gorillaz’ virtual status. When people pointed The Lenz against anything magenta, we served our audience with Gorillaz content, enriched by local offers. After all, it is much easier to create mountains of flexible, exclusive content when you are dealing with cartoons.

We turned the world magenta: fountains, buildings, grass. And created a whole new dimension of entertainment: from people gathering around magenta fountains to people sitting at home drawing magenta squares — we shared unique content through touch points that was uniquely ours: our brand colour!

Using our customers’ phones and a dab of magenta, we turned Europe into a stage for Gorillaz to enter the real world and reminded everyone of the power of our brand. This was further cemented by local product offers, served through the app.

Execution

In order to drive downloads we needed the app to become famous by getting the campaign on everyone’s lips. So we launched in a big way — with magenta takeovers, and the world’s first live cartoon interview; all with a heavy PR-media push.

Suddenly magenta portals appeared across Europe and Europeans woke up to a new magenta reality that drove our key message:

‘Release Gorillaz with The Lenz. Download now!’

A message we delivered across OOH, digital, social with local influencers and print. Spearheaded by our app trailer, seeded across the Internet revealing the Gorillaz and Telekom partnership as being behind these iconic canvasses, we had created a campaign that enabled us to release geo-located product offers and Electronic Beats lifestyle and music content, as we created a whole new dimension of entertainment.

Our 11 markets could deliver a fully integrated participative campaign, with just a spray can of magenta paint.

Outcome

In the first two weeks, before the launch of our market campaigns, we have, based on PR and organic reach, 14 million impressions, 800,000 organic video views, 2700 social mentions, and with minimal media support the Lenz app is already on 55,100 phones across Europe.

But more importantly we were present on everything from socks to iconic buildings, hijacking our colour wherever it was found. Even ads from other brands who’ve had the audacity to use our colour.

We featured in Pitchfork, BBC, Rolling Stone and more for a total earned media reach of €20m.

But ultimately, our most important ROI is the one we can’t measure — how many media channels we created? Potentially millions: Wherever you see magenta, Telekom Electronic Beats are bringing you Gorillaz and local product offers in the most guerrilla way imaginable.

Relevancy

Our colour, magenta, is one of our biggest brand assets. But rather than try to get magenta into more spaces, we decided to drive our least engaged youth audience to look at magenta in a completely different way.

So we turned our brand colour magenta into a media channel, using chroma key technology to connect youngsters to a shared world of exclusive content using our free app, The Lenz. We partnered with the world’s biggest virtual band, Gorillaz, and made unique and excusive content available on all things magenta.

Strategy

To build our relationship with Europe’s youngsters we needed a partner who would be truly compelling with broad appeal.

We partnered with the forever-youthful virtual band Gorillaz. Real bands have fans that age with them, but the cartoon-drawn Gorillaz never age; and typically partner up with contemporaries who capture the zeitgeist, which keeps them relevant to youth audiences. In a partnership with such a compelling and loved band it would be easy to be overshadowed, forgotten or even rejected. Our strategy revolved around the need to be an important, welcome and visible part of things.

Rather than trying to share the stage with professional performers we decided to do something revolutionary. If we couldn’t be the content, maybe we could be the media channel.

With access to millions of European youngsters and the smartphones in their pockets, we had the perfect solution.

Synopsis

All networks face similar problems: Even though phones are people’s most cherished possession, telcos are increasingly being seen as a commodity. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that our ‘product’ is invisible – we are in effect selling air. This is what makes network branding so important, but increasingly even that’s becoming wallpaper. Which is especially true for our youngest audiences.

In 2020, millennials will comprise of 50% of the workforce. But they’re a fickle audience to engage. A Forbes research found that in the post-financial-crash age of austerity 57% of young Europeans claim to feel alienated. They are seeking engagement, participation and identity, and as is the case for many established brands, they are now our least engaged audience.

Telekom Electronic Beats, a music-lifestyle marketing programme, exists to bridge this engagement gap. Since 2000 Telekom Electronic Beats has created a universe of music experiences with electronicbeats.net at its heart.

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