Telstra, Australia’s largest mobile network, loves people using their mobile phones. Unless those people are at the cinema.  

As a sponsor of cinema, Telstra wanted people to switch off their phones and respect the films. The problem is, audiences don’t pay attention to the commercial messages before the movie starts, especially ones from a mobile phone company. The only time we could really get viewers to pay attention was when the movie actually began.  

So we used this insight and create something that people would actually pay attention to. 

With phones so pervasive in every facet of life, and a movie going public who’ve fallen out of practice during the pandemic – cinema etiquette is at an all-time low.

In fact, the only way Australians put their phones away is when they think the movie is actually starting – and by then it’s too late.

So we created phone etiquette PSA’s with all the heuristics of opening titles, secretly loaded with our message about movie manners.

As Australia’s largest network, Telstra is committed to connecting Australians in more places than anyone else. But as passionate movie fans, there’s one place we agree everyone’s better off without their phone – the cinema.

However, while cinemas have been asking patrons to silence their phone for years, smartphone use has increased. And where once the main irritation was an unsolicited rendition of the Nokia tune, we now also have the distracting glow of social media scrolling to contend with.

With moviegoers sitting through around half an hour of commercials before the main feature, yet another ad would struggle to make an impact. So we didn’t make one.

Instead we lured moviegoers into sitting up and taking notice by playing off our shared love of film - and embedding our message into the opening titles of the movie itself. Or at least a movie: one entitled “Turn off your phone”.

We created a series of flawless, counterfeit opening titles designed to look like the film was beginning, but instead it told people to turn off their phones.

The opening titles themselves slowly and comedically introduce the idea before the “movie title” (and the punchline) lands: Turn Off Your Phone.

For work that was strategically made to blend in, the series really stood out. So much so that SXSW Sydney rolled them into their own film festival before they rolled out into major cinema chains nation-wide. The results are hard to measure, anecdotal feedback has told us that theatre goers are loving and welcoming these as a novel departure for the brand, and cinema advertising in general.