Bouygues Telecom is a well-known French phone operator that is recognized for the quality of its mobile networks – even and especially in the most rural areas of France.

It is also the operator that, historically, has innovated the most to make new technologies accessible to the largest possible audience: the first operator to include a free mobile with their packages, the first operator to automatically include 4G in all bundles…

And yet, in a market of 4 ruled by a price war, Bouygues Telecom still ranked third in consideration.

In 2020, Bouygues Telecom repositioned itself to appeal to a more premium target and focused on its strengths: the most caring, locally-involved and customer-oriented operator.

This translated into new brand purpose “make people’s relationship grow and fight all forms of exclusion”.

Because 1GB can make a difference in the real world, Bouygues Telecom launched “The GB Donation”, in partnership with the French Red Cross.

The idea was to enable all Bouygues Telecom customers with data left on their prepaid packages to donate it to people who need it the most, at the end of the month.

Those customers were notified by text message that they were eligible donors and were redirected to a dedicated website to opt in and donate their unused data… all the GB collected were then turned into voice and data packages and given by The Red Cross to people in need all over France. Bouygues Telecom also gave smartphones to be handed out alongside the sim cards.

On the one hand, phone operators sell packages with more and more data to allow their customers to scroll, stream, play and connect with their loved ones 24/7. Data packages have become so generous that they often don’t get fully used…

And on the other hand, in France in 2020, there were still 5 million people without access to the internet. In a society that tends to be more connected than ever this leads to bigger inequalities: unable to do their paperwork, study, find a job, pay their taxes or keep in touch with their relatives, they are slowly marginalized.

For Bouygues Telecom, whose brand signature is “we’re meant to be together”, the digital divide couldn’t remain unbridged. And this creative brief was about how everyone, starting with Bouygues Telecom, could do something – and how the brand could live up to its promise of working towards a more inclusive society.

This campaign was first targeted towards Bouygues Telecom’s mobile customers, as they were the only ones eligible to participate in the operation: the brand reached out to them through text message and emailing (CRM), also asking their community to share the word among Bouygues Telecom subscribers – and beyond !

As the amount of collected GB grew bigger and bigger, Bouygues Telecom advertised the operation towards a larger audience made of suburban and rural families with children (their core target) and a target of urban working young people (25-40) sensitive to social and environmental issues.

To this effect, the brand partnered with Loopsider, an online media and video pure player that produced short videos about the digital divide and inclusion. A PR and influence campaign, was also launched to advertise the operation on social networks and through collaborative media.

The campaign ran for 2 months, before Christmas. This was an image campaign with 2 main objectives:

Towards Bouygues Telecom’s clients: gather a maximum of data and make them proud to be Bouygues subscribers. This proved to be a success: 250k GB were collected and 20% of subscribers said they were “extremely proud” to be Bouygues clients.

Towards the general public: come across as a modern brand, aware of its social impact and capable of embodying the values of solidarity, quality, proximity and generosity… consistent with the brand purpose and different from competitors. Here again, the campaign operated a positive shift in brand perception: + 17% in proximity, +19% in quality +5% in intention to subscribe.