Christmas is hectic and expensive for families. In Denmark, it is a celebrated Danish tradition to have a video Advent calendar on TV with 24 episodes, watched daily in all families. On weekends, families spend fortunes on DIY Christmas decorations. The idea was to create a video advent calendar entertaining families, while enabling creative family time with scissors and paper, without adding to the expenses of Christmas.

Family smartphone sales rarely happen without influence of children – children’s pester power is growing, and their influence increasing with digitalization (on average a Danish child has 1.9 devices), as children are more tech savvy than their parents. As a result, 37% of parents let their child choose which smartphone’s are purchased, while children initiate 16% of smartphone purchases. 79% of children find smartphone brands important, why winning the hearts of children is an opportunity to become relevant during family Telco purchases.

By using this strategy, YouTube Trueview was used to launch the Christmas calendar with a video introducing the universe, and the main character ZigZog, who risks everything to save Christmas – but in order to succeed, the children have to help him by creating the elements needed for the main character to save Christmas. 27 daily video advent calendar episodes unfolds this story, 5 ended with a problem for children to solve using scissors and paper – children uploaded their creations which where later included in the storyline. In total 2 hours of digital content was distributed over 27 days, activated using YouTube in-display, showing content to consumers displaying an interest.

For consumers who did not actively follow up, 3 YouTube snippets where used to hype the Christmas advent calendar videos, reminding them to join the fun. This was supported with TV campaigns, outdoor, display, and events in malls.

By only targeting family using data, the media approach ensured relevance. Using YouTube meant the campaign was easily accessible to the target audience, and proved to be the key platform in engaging consumers. More than 90% of content consumed in the campaign, was consumed on YouTube, giving us outstanding results:

• Over 34.000 hours of video content watched

• 30.877 social interactions on Facebook and Instagram

• 124.009 clicks to the campaign site

• 1.628 pictures from children uploaded

• 2.6 million video views

• 2 top 10 ranks on YouTube Denmark Leaderboard 2015

This campaign has truly strengthened Telenor’s position as a family Telco – 58% of parents with children age 4-10 remember seeing the Christmas campaign, and 39% felt the campaign contributed to brand likeability.