A case study of a plucky little challenger brand that made waves against the big boys in the telecom market.

2. It might just work
We get asked a lot about how the 48 brand was created - so decided to scribble it all down whilst
it’s still fresh in our heads. We did not create 48 on our own. We worked with some smart guys,
were inspired by some creative folk and stole from the best challenger-brand literature around.
It would not have been possible without the full backing of our Telefónica senior management –
no small thing when you consider what we were proposing; a brand that tells most of the market
it is not for them. To quote Jonnie Cahill, our Marketing Director and project sponsor “who
knows, it might just work”.
Paul + Emer
The brand team @ Telefónica Digital
Paul.dervan2@o2.com
Emer.mccarthy2@o2.com

3. Background 4
Brand extension or brand new? 5
Creating a youth brand from scratch 6
Our value proposition 9
Building on scarcity 9
A brand only for 48 months 9
The 48 brand 10
Building creative flexibility into the brand 13
Our launch 15
Media context 16
The 48 media rulebook 17
Creative strategy 19
Injecting our brand into every interaction 23
Story so far 24
Communication measures 25
Brand measures 26
Commercial measures 26
Contents

4. 4
Background
Telefónica’s O2 brand is the number-two player brand in the Irish market with over 30% share.
When we began this piece of work, O2 had some of the youth market. Yet, it had not focused on
it as much as its competitors; it instead effectively served older segments. These segments are
generally less sensitive to price. Their purchasing decisions are also influenced by brand size,
trust, network coverage and customer service – all of which O2 was known for, and still is.
But as total market growth slowed down, competition increased and the economy fell apart, we
re-examined the youth segment as an opportunity to grow market share.
We felt we could steal some share of youth.

5. 5
Brand extension or new brand?
Launching a value proposition under the O2 brand would have been the less costly and faster-to
market approach. It would have been the easier-to-execute solution. The O2 brand has over 95%
awareness in Ireland. It also boasts a strong distribution of retail stores nationwide, an effective
marketing team, as well as strong sponsorships, contacts and suppliers that could be leveraged to
deliver a new value proposition.
O2 is for my parents
The O2 brand is polished, slick and smart. It’s worth billions. We’re both honoured and proud to
have managed it in Ireland. Given its international success, O2 warrants strong and strict brand
guardianship. Ever consistent, ever present; you can spot a piece of O2 advertising a mile off.
But it’s this consistency of appearance and tone that can also be a weakness when trying to
attract different audiences, especially the youth market. In Ireland, the O2 brand does not suggest
‘youth’ to kids. It is described as ‘premium, ‘for my parents’. It would take radical action and time
to change perceptions. And it was questionable whether we’d want to change perceptions so
radically, when the brand successfully appealed to a third of the population already. We needed to
tread carefully.
Threat of cannibalisation
There was another challenge. If we were actually successful in persuading teenagers that O2 was
a brand for them, with value propositions just for them, our existing, older O2 customers may also
want these (lower-priced) propositions. There was a real threat that we would cannabalise our
existing customer base.
Easy decision.

6. 6
Creating a youth brand from scratch

7. 7
Creating a youth brand from scratch
Like all challenger brands, we had far fewer resources than our competitors. But we had the
advantage that we could create a brand from scratch, completely tailored to youth – hopefully
meeting their needs, lifestyles and attitudes better than a larger competitor that serves many
segments.
No pyramid polishing
We had just one month to create our new brand. We needed a take a practical, pragmatic
approach to brand building. No time for ‘brand pyramid polishing’ as marketer and author
David Taylor would say. So, we chose to work with the very talented innovation agency ‘WhatIf
Innovation’ and a small group of young, talented, creative folk.
Shield the existing brand
A key requirement when creating our new brand was we needed to shield O2. Our goal was to
steal market share in Ireland within the under-25s segment. Anyone over-25 was within O2’s
heartland. So our new brand had to also repel the over-25 market.
Our competitors Our brand
Stores throughout the country. No stores - youths didn’t value them
Expensive call centres No call centres – youths didn’t value them
Many, confusing price tariffs Simple, transparent pricing
V

8. 8
Teenagers go through massive change during these pivotal years
We immersed ourselves in the world of teenagers. The insight that immerged as most interesting
for us was that teenage years are ones of massive change. Things change a lot for them during
these pivotal years between child and adult. These are times when they do their driving tests,
have their first relationship, first break up, first day in college and many other firsts.
Other relevant insights
Other insights that influenced our brand decisions included:
Teenagers are not a patient lot. They have grown up expecting immediate gratification.
Regardless of any great value, if we didn’t make things easy for them to access, we’d lose
them along the way.
They’re inventive. They find ways around things. Money is tight with these guys. They
accept this and see it as a challenge. They’ll look for the cheapest win every time. That
might mean stealing the neighbour’s Wi-Fi or reselling bottles of Tesco vodka. And when
they do so, they gain social currency from peers. They become celebrated, not shunned.
Simplicity and transparency were important for trust. They have come to expect hidden
charges and ‘catches’ from big corporations.
They don’t look too far ahead into the future. Any event beyond the immediate six months
was not going to influence them. Your youth years are a time when serious could wait.

9. 9
Our value proposition
Our value proposition set out to challenge the way mobile was seen in Ireland. We’d compete
on what youths valued – price, simplicity, transparency. And customer service delivered through
Internet and social media. Just as importantly, we’d not offer features or services that youths
could live without.
Building on scarcity
We were liberated by the idea that we could be a brand that was not for everyone. This already
gave us a licence to be a bold confident brand.
We further built on this idea to see if the concept of scarcity could play a strategic role within
our brand. We played with various versions of this. For example, we considered a brand ‘only for
under 25s’ that we called SUB25. We looked at iterations of this - ‘invite-only’ or a brand where
‘only girls get free sims’, but guys didn’t.
A brand only for 48 months
We landed on the concept of a brand that would only be for a specific period of their lives –
their inbetweener years. This perfectly fit our insight and was on strategy. No better way to let
teenagers know this brand is for them. And to tell others we were not for them.
We also knew that it would create talk – was there seriously a brand saying we only want a very
small group of people? And even with this group, we would kick them off our network after four
years. It was ballsy. Full of energy. We loved it. So our brand would be just for youths aged 18 to
their 22nd birthday, the 48 best months in their lives.
We had our new brand - 48.

10. 10
The 48 brand

11. 11
Being a teenager is a strange time... its the prime of our
youth, when we get out and see the world. We learn so much
about ourselves during this time. Like Eddie Vedder said... all
thats sacred comes from youth... but its more than that. Not
only is it the prime and the epitome of our youth, but its also
when the prospect of being an adult really dawns on us.
Its a very exciting, magical time, but its also a very sad,
fleeting one. To realize that here we are, old enough to drive
and stay out late and fall in love and everything, but we
gotta make the best of it while we can. Because tomorrow,
we may be putting on a suit and tie every day, paying bills,
sitting at a desk. Its like we only get a tiny window to
learn who we really are as mature people, before the burden
of modern life crushes who we wished to become.
,
,,
,
, ,
,
Teenager comment online

12. Our brand idea: celebrating the best 48 months of your life
The 48 months between the ages of 18-22 are epic. Think about it. Your first relationship. Your
first break-up. Your first day in collage. And other firsts. They all culminated in those 48 months.
It was beyond eventful and you never had the money to enjoy it. Ironically, it was the best time of
your life. You just didn’t know it yet.
That’s where 48 lives. It celebrates those 48 months. It reminds 48ers that this period of immunity
is finite. It challenges them to make the most of this reckless and happily irresponsible period.
Go Conquer
Our brand idea was nicely articulated with the tagline ‘Go conquer’. It had loads of energy and
was directive in a tongue-in-cheek way. We liked this line from the very beginning, although we
didn’t realise how quickly it would gain traction with youths. Many refer to us as “48 Go Conquer”.
Our brand attributes: Be playful. Look magnetic. Act opportunistic.
We always wanted our brand to be playful. It needed fun. After all, serious can wait. We would
not take things seriously. We also felt it should be an attractive brand. Our pricing would be
cheap, so we wanted to counter this perception by never looking tacky or cheap. We wanted
youths to be attracted to us. Finally we would act in an opportunistic way – always looking for
tactical opportunities to create talk. That’s it - three attributes. Everything else we’d figure out as
we went along.
12
Go Conquer

13. Our attitude: We don’t want a
The other interesting angle was that we said
“We’re not for you forever”. We talked about
48 being more like a fling than a relationship.
This took some explaining internally. The
(very reasonable) questions we fielded went
something like this “We’re actually going to
kick paying customers off our network? And
we’re telling them this even before they join
us?”
But we knew from our industry experience
that teenagers don’t stay with their network for
anything near four years. And when we tested
this aspect with teenagers. they confirmed that,
for them, four years is a lifetime away. They’d
deal with it when they time comes. They don’t
think ahead beyond six months.
the brand
Having worked on such a consistent brand in
the past, we knew the inherent baggage this
can bring when it comes to message cut-
through. Consistent brands can often insist on
a particular format, colour, style always used.
This makes sense but is limiting. We wanted a
consistent brand but also wanted flexibility.
13

14. Our Slate background
Our competitors’ brands were all inherently nice. Wholesome. Bright colours. Optimistic.
Good. Polite. Nobody played in the darker side of the spectrum. Black was too dark for
them. But not for us. It was bold, confident, and edgy. It felt young and worked well with
all other colours. Ultimately we’ve moved from a flat black background to a distressed slate
one, which gave it texture and was more interesting than a pure black colour.
Our Rip / tear
We used a rip/tear in our communications, which separated our slate background from the
rest of the ad. Essentially, what this did was allow us to use any colours, any style and any
creative format while still being clearly a 48 piece of communication.
Flexible 48 logo and font
While we have not changed our 48 logo yet, we agreed it could change shape and colour
- once it had sufficient awareness. Similarly we changed font of our ‘Go Conquer’ tagline
in our second campaign. While this seems to break brand ‘consistency’ rules, our brand
meaning is very coherent – allowing for us to not be too rigid in consistency measures.
Also, to date, we’ve used the same headline “Go Conquer” in every single outdoor
execution.
Coherent brand first
Because our brand was build around a very easy-to-understand concept, we did not need
to rely on a singular creative treatment to stay consistent. We had lots of flexibility with
style, format, energy and colours. Our second campaign ‘Serious can wait till 22’ TV ad
featured a colourful, japanese pop girl band singing in japanese. It was very different to our
launch campaign in many many ways, yet was still clearly 48.
14

15. Our launch

16. Media context
The telco industry is an advertising-heavy one.
Big players can easily drown-out any upstart.
They have the capacity to react to a competitor
quickly, with the ability to turn around a
campaign within weeks – sometimes within
days. Their campaigns are TV-led, but are
heavy on every media channel.
Their weakness, if any, is they execute too
many campaigns. This is a consequence
of complexity - having multiple segments,
multiple products and services all fighting for
promotion. The result can sometimes be short-
lived campaigns.
16

17. 17
The 48 media rulebook
Our brief to the talented bunch at Starcom Mediavest was that we needed rapid brand awareness,
credibility and immediate sales – all within youth. Almost as important, we’d like if older folks
didn’t even know we existed. Mediavest matched our challenger ambition and helped us write a
48 media rulebook that was as ballsy as the brand itself.
Outdoor (OOH) was our lead media.
We led - not with TV – but with outdoor (OOH). Youths are hard to reach but they over-
index on outdoor media consumption. Sustained advertising on billboards, buses and train
stations did the campaign’s heavy lifting of sales and brand awareness.
We planned the outdoor media months in advance around college events, festivals and
holidays. And when college was quiet, we didn’t turn outdoor off. Instead we switched it to
smaller formats in shopping centres and nightclubs.
Use TV for what it’s best for.
While not our lead media, TV was still a very important part of our media plan. We had a
massive job to achieve brand credibility and comprehension quickly. We had a very unique
brand story that needed to be told. Putting a slick, polished, sexy ad on TV would relay
gravitas and confidence to a naturally suspicious target market. But we used it selectively.
Use different media for different things.
Digital accounted for our second highest investment of our media budget. We took it
extremely seriously. After all, we didn’t have a physical retail distribution. We needed online
to sell hard. The intricate targeting that the likes of Facebook and Google offered, allowed
us to focus our online advertising on delivering sales, whilst allowing display media to focus
on ‘awareness’ and ‘credibility’.

18. 18
Behave bigger than you are.
One thing we learned from Apple when launching the iPhone in Ireland was to use large
formats to make a statement.
While considered less efficient if measured by ‘direct response’, large formats can help
position your brand as ‘premium’. We used the biggest formats we could find: 48 sheets, 96
sheets, Golden Squares. Our launch TV ad was 50 seconds long. We had a story to tell and
were not going to sacrifice it for the sake of 10 or 20 seconds, especially when our TV media
buy was modest.
We did full page magazine ads. We agreed that if we did any press, it would always be a
fullpage. If we could not afford a full page, we would not do press at all.
We sponsored “Home & Away”, the ultimate in hangover TV shows, which ran twice a day
on our national broadcaster. The TV sponsorship also sent a subtle message that we were a
brand that was settling in for the long term.
Don’t behave like a telco.
Behave like H&M. In other words, don’t pop up overnight with a flash offer, drown out all the
TV and radio ads, then pull your offer and disappear weeks later. 48 was planning to always
have best-in-market offers for the youth market. So instead 48 would behave like a fashion
brand, say H&M or Zara; confidently reinforcing the same value, whilst rotating the creative
to remain fresh and engaging each time.

19. 19
Creative strategy

20. 20
Creative Strategy
Although our competitors play big in their
advertising media, they play safe in their
creative. In fairness, this is probably the right
strategy for them, as they target every segment
and cannot risk alienating anybody. So unlike
a pair of Adidas, there was a good chance that
a teenager’s granny was with the same phone
network as they were.
Never do mirror-to-audience
advertising
Influenced by our previous brand work on O2,
and the books from challenger brand writer,
Adam Morgan – we set out the brand to never
engage in ‘mirror-to-audience’ advertising.
This is an easy trap to fall into – showing
your customers in your advertising so they
can relate to you. So many brands in their
advertising say, “This is you. We know you, so
we are for you”. But this is not the behaviour
of challenger brands. People are attracted to
confident brands - to brands that say, “This is
us. This is what we believe in.” We did not want
youths to identify with us. We wanted them
to be attracted to us. To be intrigued. Perhaps
confused. Even outraged. But leaning forward
to find out more.
We care about insights.
We care less about reality
We believe challenger brand advertising is not
there to simply inform. We view it in the same way
movie writers treat their audience. They want to
be entertained, to suspect belief for a few minutes.
People want to watch drama, complexity, intrigue
and conflict. They want story.
In a world where the audience has much
more control over what ads they are exposed
to, our job is to create something intriguing,
interesting or entertaining. Something they
want to watch again. To quote Russell Davies
“Nobody ever walked out of a cinema and said
they loved the film, as it was really clear”.
Sledgehammer
Our modest budget meant that any piece
of communication would need to be
remembered after one viewing. Forget 5+
coverage figures. There was no room for
insipid, banal communications. So “it must be
a sledgehammer” was our filter criterion for
all our advertising. Regardless of how well the
creative route or visual conveyed our message,
it was killed if it didn’t grab people by the throat
and pull them into our brand.

21. 21
TV
Coming-of-age story
A young talented creative called Tom Jackson wrote our TV script, with the help of our highly
creative agency – Brando. The ad is a coming-of-age story, narrated by a 22 old girl. She is
thinking back to when she was 18 and still innocent.
Stealing (with pride) a technique from Sam Mendes’ film ‘American Beauty’, the ad pulls the
audience into the story within seconds with the line: “That’s me. 18. Hardly knew a single person
in this room…but that all changed.”
Things all start to change when she hits 18 and by end of the ad she is no longer the girl she used
to be. This format allowed us to deliver our brand proposition in an interesting, memorable way.
Style reference
Our story, while insightful and smart in its format, would not in itself, deliver our sledgehammer.
That would all rest in the treatment. Brando’s style reference was a TV commercial for Billycock
jeans. The ad, called ‘Denim worth dying for’, looked more like a movie trailer. Sensual. Dark. Edgy.
With lovely camera work and a loud rifting, eerie solo guitar that built atmosphere. It reminded us
of something from Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown.
There was nothing like this in the telco industry. It was perfect.

22. 22
Outdoor (OOH) and Digital
The implication from our media strategy was
we needed outdoor creative that would really
cut-through. No place for ‘wallpaper’ creative.
We took our format cue from H&M, Diesel
and other fashion brands – stunning photos
with bit of attitude. We wanted the brand
to look magnetic. But were keen not to take
ourselves too seriously – so made them a little
provocative to create talk. In addition to large
and standard formats, we tried non-traditional
ambient such as nightclub door stamps and
and bike saddle covers in universities.
Our digital was a combination of display and
very targeted facebook, Google and affiliate
marketing. The large formats were used for the
same reasons we did large outdoor – to behave
big and get notice. We used our more efficient
pay-per-click online in conjunction with our TV
and outdoor knowing that youths will search
online if they see 48 in other media. Our twitter
and facebook pages were for customer service
and to engage customers further.

23. 23
Injecting our brand into every interaction
We didn’t have the same resources, as the big guys, especially not in
advertising. But we injected our brand into everything we did. Every
interaction with a customer or the market was an opportunity to differentiate
ourselves or create talk.
Head of Rejection
48 is not for everybody. So we decided to actually recruit a Head of Rejection.
Her role was to do spot check on customers to ensure our customers were ‘48
material’. This caused equal amounts of delight and outrage.
We’d tell customers that we are “running background checks” on them,
sometimes explaining that we wanted to make sure, “they were not some sort
of drug lord”.
Voicemail messages
We used the same actress from our launch TV ad for our voice messages (IVR).
And she flirted and teased customers. If you had no voicemail, you’d hear her
say “You’ve no voice messages – clearly you don’t have enough friends”.
Customer care
Our customer care agents on facebook and twitter were trained on the
48 brand and would flirt or engage in a bit of banter with customers if the
opportunity arose.

24. 24
Story so far

25. Communication measures
While it is still early, all the measures are looking
very positive. Most importantly, 48 has outflanked its
competitors and can confidently say it is already a
serious option within youths’ consideration set. It has
delighted, outraged and polarized opinions across the
country, picking up many happy customers along the
way.
Here are some of our initial communication and brand
scores:
Outdoor (OOH)
Independent MRBI research showed that most
spontaneous awareness came from our OOH
- as you’d expect from our strategy. After three
months, our MRBI’s ‘unprompted awareness’
score, among 18-24 year olds, was 77%.
Doubled norm recall on large formats
We outperformed on every measure. For
example, our 48-sheet (large format billboards)
had double the industry average recall within 15-
19 year olds with an 82% recall.
Higher recall among women
Our outdoor also spiked for younger women,
with 83% recall among 15-19 year olds.
TV recognition
Within three months of launch, 72% of under-25s
recalled our TV ad. The Millward Brown (MB)
norm in Ireland is 49%. Despite a relatively low
TV spend, of these, 63% said they saw the ad ‘lots
of times’.
TV distinctiveness and talk ability
Our research also found that 60% of those under
25 agreed the TV ad was one that “you would
talk about with your friends”. The MB norm is
41%. Again, with the under 25s, 90% said they
found the TV ad ‘distinctive’. The MB norm is
58%. Equally interesting, was that nobody (zero)
found the ad ‘soothing’. The average is 26%.
TV message recall
82% of under 25’s recalled that ‘with 48, I can
get all calls and texts to any mobile for just €10 a
month”. And 75% of recalled our brand message
that ‘things happen when you turn 18 and next
48 months are best in your life”.
77%Unprompted
awareness
82%Large Format
recall
83%Recall amoung 15-
19 year old women
72%Under 25’s
recalled TV ad.
60%Would talk about
it with friends
82%TV message
recall
25

26. Brand measures
These tend to be longer-term measures of brand, less connected to
specific advertising executions. These could include TBCA scores,
brand awareness, consideration and other measures of brand health.
a) Brand awareness
Within three months of launch, 63% of youths in Ireland were
aware of the 48 brand. It had spread like wildfire.
b) TBCA
Total brand communication awareness (TBCA) is a measure
of awareness of any communication about a brand – not just
advertising. Within three months, 48 generated the highest
level of total (TBCA) at 48%. Meteor, the network previously
associated with youth, was closest at 34%. Word of mouth was
the 2nd biggest driver of TBCA.
c) Brand comprehension: Why 48 exists?
Youths immediately understood not just our messages and
offers. They were able to understand why the 48 brand
exists. They could even articulate it to each other within the
constraints of a tweet.
Commercial measures
For confidentiality reasons, our sales figures can’t be disclosed. But
six months in, and 48 are beating the ambitious targets, stealing
market share in youth.
63%Youth awareness
48%Total Brand
Communication
Awareness
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27. Go Conquer