With this single print ad, we launched an innovative new product using a medium that isn’t traditionally known for its innovation, and generated significant conversation, coverage and awareness of the brand and the product. We didn’t use any apps, widgets or gadgets. Instead, we thought about the medium differently and, with just paper, ink and smart art direction, we created a world first for print advertising.

OBJECTIVE: In Ireland areas of poor cell phone coverage are a constant problem. That why eir, Ireland’s largest telecom company, introduced WiFi Calling – an exclusive product that eliminates cell phone coverage problems by using WiFi to boost your signal. Our campaign objective was to create mass awareness of eir as innovators in the cell phone market. Our creative objective was to reduce the technological complexity of this new product into something simple that consumers could easily grasp.

CONCEPT: In Ireland people refer to areas of poor cell coverage as “black spots”. We decided to use this as a simple analogy for communicating the product benefit – WiFi Calling gets rid of black spots. So we took over the entire Daily Mail Magazine and removed every single black spot. Every full stop, colon, semi-colon and tittle was replaced with a colourful eir dot. Readers then found out the reason why in a full-page advert at the back of the magazine.

TARGET AUDIENCE: Coverage black spots are nationwide, so our target market was effectively everyone in Ireland age 16 and up. In a country with a population of 6.3 million, our single ad in a newspaper with a circulation of just 41,000 reached over 6.7 million people*, generating 26 articles across 16 countries. *Source: Olytico Social Media & News Media Monitoring