At their core, the holidays are about embracing the inevitably of overdoing it: no matter our intentions, we tend to overeat, oversleep and, sadly, go overboard on our data usage.
Following its summer brand reintroduction campaign, Shaw-owned mobile provider Freedom Mobile is reminding customers who are prone to exceeding their data limits, especially during the holidays, that it need not be the case this year.
Working with Toronto-based agency Rain, the telco launched a holiday campaign on Black Friday to support its limited-time “Big Binge Bonus” offer, which includes a free 100-gigabytes of bonus LTE data in addition to customers’ monthly allotment. And once again, it has turned to Canadian actor and comedian Will Arnett to deliver its criticism of the overage charges that often come with traditional plans from big carriers.
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In “Overdoing It,” one of two campaign spots, Arnett points out the various ways that Canadians tend to overdo it during the holidays, but says by switching to Freedom, customers can overdo it with their data worry free. In the second spot, the actor likens the snowmen trapped inside a girl’s snow globe to “mommy and daddy” stuck with their expensive data plans.
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Both ads feature the tagline “That’s Freedom,” a slight evolution of last year’s “You Deserve Freedom” creative concept, which launched during the back-to-school season as parents prepared to send their kids off to school, mobile phones in hand. That effort included three spots with Arnett designed to support Freedom’s offering of 10G for $50, one of the most competitive in the market.
Freedom’s back-to-school campaign marked the rebirth of the Freedom brand, says Laura Davis-Saville, VP of strategy at Rain. That initial work promoted the telco as the go-to provider for “a fair and valuable wireless solution.” Now in the second iteration of the campaign, the brand remains focused on proving to Canadians that there’s a cheaper alternative to unnecessary overage charges as it continues to hammer away at one of consumers’ biggest pain points, she says.
“The offer really is the hero, and we’ve always looked at the celebrity component of the campaign as being the thing that puts some air underneath the wings to lift up the offer,” says Dave Stubbs, Rain VP and ECD. “Especially in this one, with the Big Binge Bonus. It really answers a problem that we’ve heard consumers talk about.”
As a comedian with a distinctly facetious humour, Arnett has collaborated with the Rain team on thinking through the delivery of some of the lines in the commercials to ensure they are representative of both the actor and the brand, says Stubbs. Finding new ways to deliver the brand message in Arnett’s unique style has become one of the biggest creative opportunities, he says.
As in the previous commercials, Arnett serves as the ultimate beacon of transparency – someone who tells it like it is, but in a humorous manner that helps alleviate some of the guilt inherent to telling consumers they’ve been wasting their money, as the Rain team explained during the last execution.
In addition to the TV spots, the campaign includes radio, OOH, digital video, banners and paid social. Assets will be in market until the end of the year.
