Telenor first launched Deezer in Hungary in 2012. But the service struggled to hit home with the nation’s youth, who are hard to reach and reluctant to pay for music streaming. Last year in a ground-breaking promotion Telenor decided to run an innovative, low cost campaign promoting Deezer’s promise to provide subscribers with the “soundtrack to their lives.”

Our aim was to create a breakthrough in perception and sales of Deezer music streaming service. First goal was to change music listening habits of the most receptive yet least solvent, youth.

We identified six online news portals to partner with; these were sources for opinionated news that resonated with our target audience. We negotiated the placement of a DEEZER widget on key news articles which were accompanied by a promotional DEEZER message prompting readers to click to listen to tunes chosen by the journalist. The journalists had full editorial control over the song selection and title editing of the widget, via an editorial platform developed uniquely for this campaign. The tunes added a new layer of emotion to the articles enabling readers to feel varying emotions depending on the chosen track.

This unconventional partnership was totally on brand for the news portal partner, our audience and DEEZER.

The involvement of the journalists in the execution demonstrated the service in a way that made the audience think much deeper and connect emotionally with DEEZER.

Overall this led to the highest ever recorded CTR for a Telenor campaign and ultimately increased DEEZER subscriptions over the 23 day campaign eightfold, by 887%!