People don’t remember phone numbers anymore – they just save them to their mobile. Rather than waste money trying to persuade customers to remember O2’s directory enquiry number, we took the opposite approach: tell them to save it in their mobile – and then forget it.

The creative idea encourages people to ‘forget’ 118500 by making it disappear. Over the hot bank holiday weekend, we targeted beaches, parks and commons. We wrote 118500:·on a beach and the sea washed it away·in ice and watched it melt·on leaflets handed out on high streets and asked for them back ten yards later

O2 was concerned that its share of the directory enquiries market would fall significantly, however, this ambient campaign has helped O2 to prevent this from happening.

We also used the ambient media to attract customers and capture their details. We aimed togenerate 10,000 responses but achieved 15,000 – 50% more than expected.