To prove the power of Three’s Mobile’s connectivity, we brought Three’s innovative network and technology to Arranmore Island and reversed over 150 years of emigration.

This campaign is a real-life demonstration of Three’s brand purpose 'to help life mean more through connecting’, with islanders experiencing the brand throughout the day. From smart fishing buoys revolutionising a centuries-old island industry, to Ireland’s first offshore digital hub enabling modern businesses to operate, to smart classrooms to encourage families to move and learn the native Irish language.

This wasn’t a week or month-long brand experience. It is one that will last a lifetime.

The indigenous Irish island of Arranmore (population 496) is one the last remaining ‘Gaeltacht’ regions that speaks the native Irish language.

Over the past few decades, Arranmore had seen its population drop from 1000 to just under 500 people. Why? Because although a huge number of people want to live their lives on Arranmore, they’re driven away from the Island in search of employment.

It was predicted to be abandoned by 2042 after the Irish Government excluded Arranmore from its broadband scheme; meaning young families and modern businesses couldn’t survive there. And if life on Arranmore disappeared, so would its unique language and culture.

Three Mobile found an opportunity to help, and in doing so, to bring its brand purpose to life in a surprising way, helping to increase consideration of the brand’s connectivity solutions.

People born on Arranmore don’t want to leave. They want to live, work and raise their families on the Island. But, without businesses, jobs, or the connectivity to support remote working, this dream will never be a reality.

We realised Arranmore was a place essentially built up by lots of small businesses. They all had their own unique challenges. This meant that we could engineer a diverse range of solutions to help save the island.

We decided to prove that ‘life means more through connecting’ by using Three Mobile’s network and innovative communications technology to save this dying island from extinction.

By treating Arranmore Island like it was a business customer, we would be able to showcase a wide array of Three’s technologies and capabilities in a unique way that captured people’s attention and put this forgotten indigenous island back on the map.

Our research revealed that the majority of our core target audience, key business decision makers, didn’t come from a technical background and therefore were more likely to be persuaded by a campaign that had genuine human emotion at its heart, rather than rational, technical messaging.

We couldn’t rely on the standard B2B testimonial campaigns, think pieces and media partnerships to drive growth. So ‘The Island’ became an opportunity - a brand experience showing how Three can partner with businesses to achieve transformative success, while bringing Three’s brand purpose to life.

For this campaign to be a success, we would need Three’s connectivity to affect real and meaningful change on Arranmore.

We decided to use emotional storytelling to demonstrate Three Mobile’s abilities to solve unique challenges and deliver for its clients. Beginning with broad reach mediums for awareness and following with targeted comms for conversion.

Arranmore had been excluded from the Irish Government’s broadband plan because of immense logistical and technical challenges.

We put the jeopardy of a unique culture left to die at the heart of our emotive campaign. Documenting every element over 18 months.

First we did what the Government wouldn’t, by giving Arranmore 5G. Then we used Three’s technologies to protect Arranmore’s unique way of living. By introducing innovations like smart classrooms to teach new residents the Irish language, connected healthcare for the elderly, and Ireland’s first offshore digital hub so businesses could work remotely.

TV, radio, and print told the story and were utilised for scale, while targeted web films, display ads, and direct mail gave our core target of business decision makers greater detail of Three’s technologies.

And to capture the imagination of people around the world, we released an open letter encouraging people and businesses to move.

“The Connected Island” is Three’s most successful campaign ever, achieving unprecedented uplifts in brand and business metrics:

+152% YoY growth

+18% Business leads

+17% IoT sales

+23% Connected Products & Services uplift

+203% Corporate base business growth

+50% Revenue on business solutions

Most importantly, Three proved the power of its connectivity by saving a dying island from extinction. Since the campaign began and the open letter was picked up by global media, there have been over 3,500 enquiries to move, an 84% tourism increase, and an incredible 11% population growth - reversing 150 years of emigration.

The campaign was even recognized by the European Commission, which invited us to Brussels to present “The Island” to an audience of 200+ community groups, government representatives, civil servants, and senior officials of EU Member States, as a blueprint for how to use connectivity to save other isolated communities on the brink of extinction.

Despite Dublin fast becoming the tech capital of Europe, many other areas of Ireland have some of the poorest internet access anywhere on the continent.

This great digital divide means that the rural, disconnected areas of the country are far removed from the modern world and its opportunities for working and living, which has forced many islanders to leave their ancestral homes and emigrate to bigger cities.

Arranmore is one of these disconnected areas, but is also one of the most unique parts of the country. It is one of Ireland’s last remaining "Gaeltacht" areas, where native Irish is spoken as a first language.

Meanwhile Arranmore’s unique dialect of Irish is totally unique to the island. If it died, so too would its culture, history and language, and centuries of Irish history would be lost along with it.