Avoiding Broadband Nightmares with BT
Client: BT
Strategic Service: Integrated Campaign Strategy
Team: Charlotte Elwig (Business Lead), Bex Colman (Account Director), Ophelia Stimpson (Strategy Lead), Will John & Henrik Ridderheim (Creative Leads)
Opportunity
Goal: Drive BT Hybrid Broadband consideration
Market: UK
Audience: Adults 30+
As a fabric of the nation brand, sometimes it can be hard for BT to jolt people into hearing them. They’re safe, trusted – but someone to sit up and listen to? Especially when talking about broadband? Perhaps not.
When we were challenged to grow consideration for BT’s ‘unbreakable’ hybrid broadband (BT’s super-fast broadband backed up by EE’s mobile network), we needed an unexpected approach.
Insight
It’s hard to find interesting insights about broadband. It’s invisible and, well, just… there. That is, until it isn’t. In a post-pandemic world, we all appreciate the value of a good broadband connection, and understand the hell that ensues when it breaks down.
But how could we bring this to life in an interesting way? After the collective trauma of Covid-19, no-one wants to see a broadband ad that brings out the violins for someone’s existential internet crisis. We needed to have a bit of fun, while also making clear BT Hybrid’s ‘unbreakable’ benefits.
So the brief became something that would foster exactly that. We asked our team to bring to life the nightmare of your broadband breaking with a hyper-real sense of fun.
Execution
An eternal advertising adage affirms that people will engage with any story that interests them – and some stories happen to be ads.
This was the exact approach we took for our broadband nightmares TV spot – bringing to life a UK family’s nightmare of losing their broadband connection in a nightmarish, trippy, parallel universe. Totally weird, eminently watchable.
The day was saved, of course – by BT’s unbreakable broadband.
As were BT’s sales results – the spot and supporting radio and OOH helped move product consideration by two percentage points.