The Tele2 company is the world’s fastest growing mobile operator (as per Analysys Mason data report) and traditionally highly scored by young people (Brand Health Tracking, 2018-2019). However since young people cover the significant part of the company’s business (by population’s percentage), the competition for Gen Z attention has intensified in 2019: the “Big Three” mobile operators had started developing large-scale campaigns among traditional media targeting at the youth.

Tele2 has faced an important task of protecting and strengthening its positions among young people.

The major difficulty seems to be as follows: young people can avoid unnecessary information by using only relevant channels and Adblock*. It’s difficult to reach them via traditional and mass media channels.

Moreover, having limited financial resources, we cannot afford to reach this audience on a large scale.

*https://www.globalwebindex.com/hubfs/Downloads/Global_Ad-Blocking_Behavior.pdf

We had 3 facts: image-building online is very important for Gen Z, their major interest is music (especially rap) and voice messages is one of the most popular formats for their communication. What if we mix them?

Idea: The Tele2 chatbot "Gigabeats" that turns the voice messages into rap tracks.

We’ve developed a special functionality for the chatbot in the Tele2 community, so it could add beats over the users’ voice messages in real time.

To activate the bot user had to send a voice message to the Tele2 bot on VK (#1 social network in Russia) and select one of the beats created by a well-known beatmaker DJ Tactics. User could send his upgraded voice message to his friend or to a group chat.

Those who wanted to show their hip-hop skills could take part in the contest. Five winners selected by DJ Tactics received gifts from the brand.

Our TA aged 14-22 is hard to reach, doesn’t trust advertising and massively attacked by competitors. We have limited resources for reaching it. Therefore we chose a strategy of launching small projects in relevant channels using formats that hadn't been used by competitors.

To find the right touchpoint we turned to statistics. There is an increasing usage of messengers on the social platforms (84% of sharing happens in DM*).

So we set a goal of getting into direct messages (where generation Z hasn’t yet developed "ad blindness"). But many brands are already active in this area, developing simple solutions (e.g., sticker sets, memes, etc.) that are hardly surprising.

At the same time, according to data from Deloitte studies**, voice message traffic has significantly increased recently. We came up with an idea to go to a place crowded with the audience, but still untouched by other brands: voice messages.

*https://www.mttr.io/blog/social/social-media-messaging-evolution **https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4096496

Timeline: 2019 June 22 – May 20.

As the main project platform we chose VK — Russia’s most popular social network, where Gen Z communicate and listen to music*.

We developed a special script for Tele2 customer service chatbot on VK — Tele2 "Gigabeats", that turned user’s voice messages into rap tracks for using them in private messages with friends. To make a track, the user had to send a voice message or record a new one and select a beat.

We had collaborated with the widely known beatmaker DJ Tactics. He created three beats of different mood and complexity in a perfect chosen tempo: with that BPM range any voice matches the beat.

The project was announced on Tele2 social media with vivid how-to examples. Local communities and mass media supported us creating their own tracks. DJ Tactics used personal pages to present the project to his followers.

*https://vk.com/doc9637095_453312678?hash=c6dfaccfaa71d45a88&dl=b835923cc11b29e4c7

We developed an innovative service and entered a space uncluttered by brands. The Tele2 Gigabeats had managed to hit the TA interests and complete brand’s goal — engaging Gen Z in communication via Tele2.

Business KPI: Segment growth in the base by 1% for Q2’19.

Marketing KPI: Consideration increased by 2 pp among TA for Q2’19.*

Tactical KPI:

Knowledge among TA aged 14-22 – 14 100 000 reach (+28% plan over-fulfillment). The project has gone viral, additional PR reach – 44 600 000 OTS;

Engagement:

The service was relevant, almost everyone who started the bot had created their own track: the conversion rate — 87%, it's 4 times higher than the average market conversion for a promotional contest (according to the Agency's expert assessment); 37% of the participants created 2+ tracks; 50 900 unique bot activations (+20% plan over-fulfillment), 69 000 tracks created (+60% plan over-fulfillment).

*Tele2 Brand Health Tracking