In a market saturated with mobile communications advertising, Tele2 needed to break through advertising clutter to improve perceptions and persuade customers to choose Tele2.The solution was an explosive brand relaunch. The relaunch, which was built to appeal to Latvia’s love of rumour, revelation and debate, was designed to promote an innovative new tariff.A fake meteorite crash was staged in the backwoods of Latvia. Evidence of a possible meteorite crash was confirmed in a firefighter’s official report. A video of the crash was seeded in social media and quickly made the breaking news on mainstream media.

Our “space visitor” blew the dismal state of Latvia’s economy off the front pages for almost a week. The day following the crash, experts arrived to discover that the crater was actually man-made. This led to speculation on who initiated this audacious stunt.

On the same day, Tele2 owned up to the stunt by announcing that the meteorite landing was staged to move attention away from the economic recession to prove that there is more to life than the crisis.Two weeks later a new flat rate tariff called “Meteorite” was launched.It has proven to be Tele2’s most successful campaign in Latvia.

To make our landing believable we studied literature and consulted with scientists.We found a place, near the isolated village of Mazsalaca, where we could peacefully create our crater. Nine men dug a giant crater and set off explosives to mimic a meteor landing.We then seeded the story on Sunday just before the evening news broadcast on TV.* Two fake meteorite landing videos were posted on YouTube* Twitter users spotted them and built buzz* A firefighter’s official report confirmed evidence of a possible meteorite crash* Within 20 minutes we had made national news.Rumours ran riot until the following day when experts arrived and reported that the crater was artificial. An equally heated conversation started on who would stage such an elaborate stunt.

On the same day in the afternoon, Tele2 owned up to the case.

The Meteorite had landed, creating a media explosion.

The campaign exceeded all our targets and craziest expectations:* Awareness hit 93% among the target audience, 1/3 ahead of target;* Meteorite was the top novelty in the country for well over a week, going viral via t-shirts, office gossip and comedians;* Worldwide coverage in CNN, BBC, China Daily, NYT and many, many others;* Post campaign research indicated 99% driven awareness of Meteorite in target group. 62% of the target audience was positive about the “Meteorite”, 12% neutral and only 26% negative;* 10% of mobile customers are considering a switch to Tele2, 100% ahead of target;* Thanks to the massive publicity, Tele2 operations in other markets became part of the story, asked whether the brand planned similar activity in their country.