Telus Holiday 2008

“Magic happens when you give smart”

The Q4 holiday season is always hectic in the telco business. And this year was no different. And with consumers using the online channel more and more, the amount of media effort in this space has increased dramatically. The challenge has become to develop useful creative that does more than just scream for attention. Our goal is to deliver a program that adds value to the consumer experience and not just interrupt with a typical offline marketing messages.

We created a campaign to support an absolutely massive media buy with over 50+ brand, retail/tactical, and rich media display ads (in all sizes), over 25 custom site placements on gift guides and partner sites, a mobile campaign, a Blackberry Storm pre-launch campaign and microsite, digital signage placed in a variety of places and configurations, plus a full-blown gift-guide microsite developed in 3D.

The Q4 ad campaign was very expansive and required a huge variety of ads. Our typical approach is to divide the campaign into brand focused ads and lower-funnel retail/tactical ads - we feel it provides the best coverage possible and we’ve had great success driving traffic to the webstore. Our rich ads featured cross-talkers, a mini product catalogue ad, and an innovative use of the google API that let users search Google directly in the ad without leaving the page. Incidentally, the display ads we did made use of the new IAB standards, and as a result we were able to achieve some pretty amazing motion, smoothness and file size. Some people (including the client) had a hard time believing they were IAB and not rich ads. See for yourself.

When it comes to helping consumers find the right handset, the magic doesn’t happen on its own. Enter the Magic Machine – a simple tool to help consumers find the right smartphone. Our internal team modeled and animated all the assets and created an elaborate “magical” world. Each scene was dynamically assembled based on the features the user selected at the beginning of the process. The result is an entertaining experience that’s different each time.