Free Wi-Fi for Good Spellers
4Ps B&M Take: The advertisement itself is an informational narrative, but the idea is a winner. What was once a traditional board game – created in 1931 – helping kids learn by stringing words together has today transformed with the times and become a billion dollar business. Their first transformation was to bring the game online with more users logging into the Internet; next was to bring it on your mobile phone with the growing number of smartphone users; and this latest campaign designed by Ogilvy Paris for Scrabble is to encourage everyone to start playing the word game via their mobile phone. Scrabble is rewarding those who can properly spell words — a skill that most grown people should possess but sadly many don’t, especially now with Interwebz speak and spelling becoming more and more acceptable. In fact, the campaign casts a completely new and contemporary light on the traditional game and goes with the telling tagline of ‘Bringing letters and people together’. The marketing insight is phenomenal and banks on smartphone users’ need for getting Wi-Fi access in areas which previously had no Wi-Fi set-ups or connection facility. Here’s what the brand and agency conceptualised and executed brilliantly. They identified and placed Wi-Fi hotspots around Paris in places that one could not get any connection. People in the area suddenly had messages pop up on their phone screens suggesting that they could get Wi-Fi access ‘free’ if they cracked a scrabble password. They had to play scrabble Wi-Fi in order to access their own free connection and prove their skill at the game. The bigger the score they made … the higher the number of minutes of free Wi-Fi they could access. To ensure that the message was spread by word of mouth, Scrabble even offered to increase the Wi-Fi connection time if the words and score were shared with friends and family. A fantastic way to ensure both word of mouth publicity, and increase brand recognition and recall at the same time. The accompanying matter-of-fact TV advertising simply added to the recall value of the brand proposition. A truly smart way to see if people still know their spellings in the digital age, while affording them a chance to save money on their bills in Internet cafes. Now that’s what we call changing with the times. Attaboy Scrabble!
