Agency: Neverstop
Client: Cricket Wireless
Cricket Communications was introducing a new brand and service and wanted to enter the market without getting lost in the clutter. At the time, Cricket was also opening a series of new stores and wanted the promotion to run simultaneously with the store openings.
Neverstop was charged with driving awareness, trial, new customer registrations and increased store traffic. They also wanted to improve the brand’s image. The company had a reputation as a third-tier, lower-income service provider, known for bad service, outdated handsets and low market share.
Neverstop turned a replica of the Samsung Messager into the world’s largest cell phone, had it certified by Guinness, and attached it to an interactive pop-up store in the middle of downtown Chicago – considered one of the bigger launch markets. The giant phone was fully functional and open to the public. With the whole city watching, people lined up around the block to make calls and send text messages using the world’s largest cell phone. The phone was featured in the St. Patrick’s Day parade, with call-ins to popular morning radio shows and audience sing-alongs over the phone to get the crowd on its feet.
They also immersed the target audience in branded environments online and off to bring them into direct contact with Cricket products and services in fun and surprising ways. Other tactics included attention-grabbing stunts like “newspaper on a train” – placing people on subways reading branded newspapers – and wallet drops, featuring Cricket-branded wallets filled with prizes. Every aspect of the campaign drove traffic to the agency-created campaign microsite, www.getsomerespekt.com.
The gimmick worked. Cricket received widespread coverage from sources like CNN, NBC News, technology and culture blogs like Engadget and Gizmodo and made the front page of Yahoo! News. The company signed up tens of thousands of new customers, directed 40,000 people to the microsite and generated 35.6 million media impressions. TV coverage of the event reached nearly 4.3 million consumers, while 63 stories about the event ran in print and online.
