In a 4-player market, Bouygues Telecom ranks 4th in business and 3rd in consideration.

The brand suffers from a distorted perception: because it was launched as a mobile service provider, prospects tend to obliterate its home internet offer… leading to a very low top-of-mind awareness on this segment (-20pts vs major competitor) and an even lower familiarity score (-28pts). A gap that Bouygues Telecom’s lower share-of-voice never managed to bridge.

This is difficult for the brand all year round… and even more so during summer. Indeed, “summer” often rhymes with “churner”, as summer is the moving season when people reconsider their contracts, opting for convenient combined mobile & internet subscriptions.

But this time, we had an opportunity: an exclusive highly competitive partnership with Netflix for any new joint mobile & internet subscription.

The brief? Capitalize on Netflix’s attractiveness to boost sales and consideration without being overshadowed by them.

A humorous yet emotional film shows a typical teenage boy watching La Casa de Papel on his phone when the battery suddenly runs out. We follow his desperate quest for his charger to watch the end of his episode. The boy ends up finishing the series on the family TV, next to his cunning mother (guess who hid the charger…).

But there is more to this 60 second drama than meets the eye. More precisely, we hid 20 references to original Netflix shows in the video and challenged even the most dedicated hardcore Netflix fans to find and register them on a dedicated landing page to win exclusive Netflix gifts, thus asserting Bouygues Telecom as a true entertainment brand, enticing people to watch our ad over and over again… and turning a promotional offer into a conversational topic—because, yes, we made it extra hard.

Since 2018, Bouygues Telecom had tried to boost consideration among a premium family target—the only target still willing to pay a premium for their mobile & internet subscriptions—by increasing the perceived value of their offers through additional services and content. Our family target (30-55) is typically a Pay TV subscriber as well as Netflix enthusiast (40% of target are viewers, 10 points above average).

Research showed that the target was consistently looking to spend more quality time together. These are values shared with Bouygues Telecom for which the worth of technology is only measured by how much it improves people’s relationships. And most importantly, this attitude coincides with Netflix’s role: whether at the coffee machine or in the schoolyard, Netflix shows are the one thing everybody will talk about.

Hence our strategic idea: Bouygues Telecom helps families strengthen their bond by watching Netflix shows together.

Only a few days before the new season reveal of Netflix’s most awaited shows, we launched the campaign on TV and VOL, in a 30s version as well as a 10s format to boost awareness.

It wasn’t long after the launch that people spontaneously started to comment on details from the ad that seemed a bit off… going crazy in YouTube’s comment section and on Twitter. It allowed us to officially launch the game among a community of series/game/Netflix fans… and the frenzy soon spread to the general public, with a little help from Facebook and Twitter sponsored posts.

During a day we even made #SpotTheRef a trending topic, regularly helping our community with a set of 20 clues… while resisting their pleas to give away the trickiest references.

With 122 million impressions, this campaign helped Bouygues Telecom exceed its business objectives with an 23% increase in subscriptions vs 2018 (vs a +15% objective)–and an incitation rate of 30% (slightly above industry standards).

In terms of branding, this campaign was also a hit: clearly attributed to Bouygues Telecom, it boosted modernity (52% vs standard of 37%) and familiarity (up to +9% among prospects). Moreover, the campaign presented above-average liking rates (65%) with even better results among a younger audience (75%) and clients (68%).

The result? A +11pt move in consideration among prospects and +8pt in the image of Bouygues Telecom’s home internet offer. 42% of prospects saying it made them learn something about Bouygues Telecom.

The activation was also a success with 45k players and 9k people actually enrolling in the final draw, spending an average 20 minutes on the page, watching our campaign over and over again.