Page 40 - Internationalist Magazine 2013 66

DIGITAL SOLUTIONS SILVER

Ted, The The strategic approach to this phase of Xerox’s

Impossible Hero repositioning campaign was to tell our story using

PHD Germany some substantial “factoids” that powerfully convey
(Local-multi) the scale and scope of what they do. To do this, they

Ted, the ilm hero,
designed high impact rich media units to talk to six
is annoyingly key services offerings to hit key verticals: Finance &

immature,
Accounting, Document Management, Human Resource
Services, Customer Care and Transportation services.
politically
incorrect, and The messaging was straight forward and by the facts,
demonstrating the enormous amount of back ofice
quite simply impossible.
Plus, he is – a teddy bear! His movie launch was up work Xerox does for so many behind the scenes. Xerox’s

against a nationwide blockbuster, as well as against
referral volume, referral rate, and cost per referral
a combined force of cinema-superheroes like The to Xerox.com’s Services pages surpassed the other

Avengers, Batman and Spiderman—all looding the
campaigns and optimizing the online media and site has
box ofice at exact the same time. So PHD decided
helped in increase all metrics across the board.

to introduce Ted to the world instead of launching a
movie. There was just one way to make people chose

the clumsy bear over a bunch of cool comic heroes: Vodafone,
Night Owls Tour
Make all communication prior to the ilm as hilarious,
disrespectful and inappropriate as Ted himself. In order OMD Germany
(Local)
to do so, PHD decided to simply provide Ted with an
online-stage as big and versatile as possible and let his Vodafone is one of

“charming” and “enjoyable” personality work its magic. the most successful
And this he did – exorbitantly so. He hijacked ilm
and well-known

sites, newspaper and magazine landing pages with his brands within the
hilarious and disrespectful behavior and made his way German market.

on Youtube, Facebook & Co. PHD knew that TED could Yet, they needed
younger audience segments to engage and interact with
only win this battle, if we could make him the hero of
the digital ecosphere – so we needed to get people to like, the brand, so they could experience Vodafone as more
than a regular telecommunication company. Vodafone
share and comment.
mobile tariffs are simply too expensive for the young,

Xerox,
urban, well-informed Facebook generation that prefers to
Made invest their scant resources in stylish clothes, the latest

Simple technology trends or going out to the best club in town.
Y&R So, how did Vodafone convince this generation that

(Global) they are not an unscrupulous mobile contract seller, but
Over the past the pulsing heart of their digital lifestyle? These young

few years people are strongly inluenced by what is popular and
trendy within their peer group. Vodafone used just that
Xerox has
transformed to its advantage, taking a series of events that turned a

itself from
small number of privileged trendsetters into powerful
‘a copier
multiplicators for Vodafone—without being perceived

company’ into one of the leading providers of business as advertising. Thus Vodafone “Nights Owls” was born,
services in the world. In 2010, Xerox launched a a next generation clubbing experience which used the

repositioning campaign centered on building credibility digital lifestyle of the target group on Twitter, Facebook
and trust in the services business. This was executed by and YouTube to the maximum. The responses were—and

using customer testimonials of popular brands to convey still are—euphoric. Each Night Owls party turns a few
hundred guests into thousands of friends following,
the services these brands outsourced to Xerox. The
problem here was that this approach put the spotlight on commenting and sharing the party live. Vodafone was
present in every tweet, every like and every post. Their
the Xerox customers, and left the Xerox brand playing
second iddle to client’s stories. Xerox needed to carry on message hit the heart of the target group with the

with telling their new story to clients, investors, analysts, smartphone turning Vodafone into their partner for fresh,
business industry leaders and inluencers; but in a way urban lifestyle. Highly successful 98% of Vodafone’s

that shifted the spotlight back to Xerox.
Night Owls became brand fans in social networks and
increased product turnover, up to 40% within the target

group.

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