Claro is a telecommunications and entertainment conglomerate with a presence in more than 15 countries. To better serve its more than 36 million Colombian users, the brand created a campaign in which it "hacked" users' phones and got them to call loved ones before midnight on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, thereby helping them to avoid the headache of experiencing service disruptions during peak activity periods.
Objective
For this campaign, Claro had four key objectives:
Context
Claro is the leading telecommunications operator in Colombia. However, being the market leader also means that its service issues are greater than those of the competition.
Every year, on December 24 and 31, Claro's lines collapse, leaving customers unable to send holiday greetings and New Year wishes to their loved ones.
Up until now, the brand had simply braced itself during the holiday season, hoping that criticism wouldn't be too strong or long-lasting. But customers began blaming Claro for the failures, and the brand's reputation worsened every year. The brand decided it was time to do something to definitively change its image.
Target Audience
The campaign's target audience was Claro's diverse customer base in Colombia, spanning various age groups, genders, and cultural backgrounds. These customers relied on Claro's services to connect with loved ones during Christmas and New Year's Eve, and they were characterized by their shared experience of frustration due to network congestion during these festive occasions.
Creative and Media Strategy
The creative and media strategies worked together as a smart solution that helped both Claro's customers and the brand itself by ensuring that those calls happened at different times of the day and not all at once.
The idea was to use voice commands to "hack" Colombians' phones and activate their devices to make the calls before midnight. Since this effort would require audio, Claro selected radio and TV as its primary mediums. With this campaign, whether Colombians wanted or not, the calls would be made before midnight, helping them to avoid the collapse of the phone lines due to congestion.
Claro began by analyzing its user database, which allowed the brand to identify the most common family contacts. Mom, dad, grandfather, grandmother, brother, and sister were the ones selected for this effort. To ensure the campaign had a high impact, the brand also used data to analyze the media that our audience consumes on a daily basis.
Next, Claro conducted tests on different devices and operating systems to ensure its spots were functioning properly.
The brand chose December 24 and 31, the days when its customers make the most calls and overload the lines. During these days, at different times of the day, Claro radio spots and TV ads included phrases like "Ok Google, call mom" or "Alexa, call grandpa." So, whether you were in the car listening to the radio or sitting in your living room watching television, when your phone heard the command, the call would be made, ensuring that Colombians would call their family members, friends, and partners throughout the day and not congest the lines at midnight.
The use of voice command technology played a pivotal role in the campaign's success. By employing voice commands through traditional media channels like radio and TV, it efficiently prompted calls, reducing network congestion during peak hours on Christmas and New Year's Eve.
The campaign primarily focused on traditional media channels, with minimal allocation to mobile and digital. The overall campaign budget was $9,000, and the allocation reflected the cost-effective approach of leveraging existing media airtime and technology for the campaign's unique solution.
By addressing the service issues and finding a solution to the congestion problem during periods when its customers want to call their loved ones, Claro demonstrated its commitment to fulfilling its mission of connecting people through technology. This helped improve customer perception and increased trust in the brand.
Results included:
This campaign was innovative because Claro used both traditional and non-traditional media in an integrated manner, creating an interactive experience with our customers' mobile phones that we activated through voice commands. The campaign positively affected customers during important moments, when feeling closer to the people they love is important.
