The creative idea encourages people to ‘forget’ 118500 by making it disappear. Most media require consumers to physically do something in order for the number to disappear. We wanted to maximise impact by using media where the number would disappear automatically, so we wrote 118500 on a beach and the sea washed it away, in ice and watched it melt, on leaflets handed out on high streets only for someone to ask for them back ten yards later.

O2 was concerned that its share of the directory enquiries market would fall significantly. However, this ambient campaign has helped O2 to prevent this from happening. We also used the ambient media to attract customers and capture their details. We aimed to generate 10,000 responses but achieved 15,000 – 50% more than expected.