Insight
In a hyper connected world the smartphone has become the bridge to stay connected to the world. 75% of conversations and behaviours revolve around mobile phones and running out of battery can easily become the most terrifying moment, it´s now a declared phobia- nomophobia.
To add up, in Colombia, discussions of energy recessions and blackouts were taking place, resistance and debates were being generated. How to take advantage of this phobia and the country´s circumstance to position the benefit of the powerful battery life of the Huawei Mate 8, a battery that lasts two days?
Strategy
Although people think they control their device, their device controls them. If their phone turns off, they turn off. This is why Huawei wanted to make Colombians experience a near “death” experience enhancing this fear massively. What if everything went black, people felt the system crashed. How would they feel if something of personal relevance is threatened? How curious, how anxious?
It was an opportunity to rethink traditional media and to go beyond the usual formats to exploit their well-known potential. MediaCom introduced a massive media blackout, “The day the media ran out of battery” bringing to them a real-life experience through the syncing of a blackout in all of the screens.
Execution
On May 8th, at exactly 8pm during the time when there are more TV viewers and internet consumption, Huawei turned all the screens off. The agency chose the most important TV channels and major websites (mobile and desktop takeovers) in Colombia and literally turned them off for 48 seconds, creating a massive feeling of running out of battery power. All transmissions – even in the middle of the news- began to be interrupted by what it looked like was a failed transmission, an annoying error sound, and finally turning into a black screen with a low battery alert.
Finally, there was a call to action and a hashtag to drive traffic to the live streaming of the Mate 8 launch immediately sparking a conversation on the impact of the blackout, which began to spread rapidly and massively on social media using the hashtag #MeQuedéSinBateria (#IRanOutOf Power).
The conversation did not end there, it was picked up by the major newspapers and radio channels of the country commenting on last night’s occurrence, which fuelled the social media conversation for much longer.
Results
Not only did this campaign prove the Colombian population is terrified of running out of battery life, but it proved that the Huawei Mate 8 made a huge media and sales impact.
The hashtag #MeQuedéSinBateria (#IRanOutOfPower) was an organic trending topic for more than 24 hours, reaching more than 2,000,000 unique users in two hours.
It drove 38% more traffic driven to the Mate 8 Website, and most importantly, sales exceeded the goal, achieving 125% in sales uplift the first month, increasing market share by 2%.
Overall, the campaign reached 83% of the Colombian population.