All these brands market in a very similar way which leverages well known pop stars to be ambassadors for their brand. This younger audience saw through this and rejected it based on a lack of authenticity.

If we approached our marketing in the same vein, they would reject us as well and see us as just another unfair and unfriendly telco. We knew that we had to challenge the category, ourselves and the student audience.

So we decided to laugh at the formulaic convention of marketing that the telcos had all fallen into and we decided to get students to laugh at their own conventions.

So we turned the idea of what a brand ambassador is in Taiwan on its head. Kristy Chu, a 50 year old university professor helped us break those conventions.

This was a pure content play to engage and interest the audience. The video was initially released and promoted across YouTube.

We then amplified this through key social platforms such as Facebook to further drive WOM and discussion around Kristy Chu and the story behind the video. Digital extended out to SEM and mobile display, once enough traction and discussion had been created, in order to drive users to the Taiwan Star website.

The results from the campaign reflected our ambition, and exceeded expectations despite such a small budget:

- 200% increase in new customer enquiries on any previous marketing activity

- 10% increase in ARPU on any previous marketing activity

- 2 million users driven to the Taiwan Star website

- Over 1 million organic views within 30 hours from release

- 12.5 million organic views for the music video across Taiwan

More interesting was some of the feedback on social media from the audience with comments such as “very touched”, “inspired”, “full of positive energy”, “be confident”, “good to be seen”, “very encouraging”, “no longer underestimated oneself”.

We had broken the paradigm of the “same same’ telco advertising and launched a new star!