Cell phone carriers are among the industry top spenders in advertising, yet sometimes it’s hard to remember what each one is saying because they are all saying similar things–we have the best network, we are more reliable, we are more powerful.
But Sprint is the only carrier that has free calling starting at 7 p.m instead of 9 p.m. For all others you have to wait the extra two hours every day to make a free call. That’s four years over a lifetime (based on a 78-year average human lifespan), according to Goodby Silverstein and Partners, San Francisco (GS&P), which built a new interactive campaign around the idea that with Sprint you wait less, separating it from the pack of cell phone carriers.
The result is an engaging website, www.waitless.org, which shows people ways to skip through the boring parts of life.
For example, visitors can watch “Sprintcuts,” quick films (ranging from 17 seconds to 29 seconds) that offer tips to turn tedious tasks–like, undressing, tieing shoes and peeling an egg–into fleeting moments.
The films, which will be updated weekly, are directed by Anders Hallberg of bicoastal Tool of North America. He also directed the TV spot that drives traffic to the site. The visual effects in the films, which make the how-to elements clearer while adding a touch of elegant humor, were added inhouse at the agency.
After watching the films, visitors can submit a written idea for a Sprintcut. GS&P also tapped into the YouTube community, allowing visitors to upload their own video showing a time-saving tip on the Sprintcuts YouTube page. If Sprint likes someone’s idea, it could become an official Sprintcut featured on waitless.org. The Sprint YouTube page also features a “favorites” section showcasing videos of people doing things to save time that already existed on YouTube that the GS&P creative team found.
“People are already looking for ways to do things faster so this is another place to reward them,” said Christian Haas, creative director at GS&P. “People are no longer consuming content linearly, they are multi-tasking all the time. It’s important you are relevant wherever they are.”
Waitless.org also features a section that answers the question, Where did the time go? Visitors can type in how many minutes a day they spend on a particular task and see how many years they will spend doing that task over a lifetime. For instance if you spend two hours a day watching TV, the “calculator man” will tell you that you will spend six years and seven months of your life watching TV. Customers can also opt to have Sprintcuts sent to them on their phone or to their inboxes, as well as browse Sprint’s different plans.
Haas said the biggest challenge of developing the site was creating films that were not only useful and pragmatic but engaging. “We had to balance that with keeping the films short and to the point because the whole point is to wait less,” explained Haas. “They couldn’t be two minutes each.”
He also pointed out that the collaboration between the broadcast and interactve producers was the key to the success of executing this campaign. “That was the make it or break it point of the story. From the very beginning we all sat together. There were no separate departments working on this. The same team that did the site did the spot, the films and the banners. There was never a separate meeting.”
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