The biggest bank in Norway, DNB, asked us to create a campaign for their savings app ”Spare” (Save). There was only one issue: The campaign was set to launch in the middle of January, Norway’s biggest and ever-increasing annual sales month. Thus, our challenge was to break through the noise of deal-pushing advertising to talk about the exact opposite thing; saving.

The objective was clear: Get people to download and use the app for saving.

Something happens to you when there’s a lot of sales. You want to buy something. No, you NEED to buy something. Even if you don’t need the thing you’re buying. So how do you make people question their shopping-habits and consider saving instead?

We took the challenge head on by launching a competing product: Nothing™ – the product that’s designed to make it easier to put money in your savings account, while still quenching the thirst for shopping.

Simply put, it’s a sexy box of air that you could purchase by saving money. Nothing™ was introduced with a big launch-campaign that attacked consumer-culture as much as it praised itself. And with a web-shop, pop-up shops, and retail placement, we made it possible for people to “buy” a physical box of Nothing™ (by saving money in the “Save”-app).

The target audience was fairly wide: Men and women aged 18-40 with a certain amount of money to spend/save. They are happy to spend money on new things, buy the newest iPhone almost every year, and have plenty of clothes in the closet they never wear, yet they buy new clothes all the time. In essence: Grown people who buy things they don’t really need, whether they’re aware of the fact or not. The strategy became a combination of sympathy and guilt-tripping. “We get that it’s tempting, but be real, you don’t need any of this”. We spoke to them when and where it mattered the most: Malls, shopping areas, online and in-between sales-promoting commercials on TV.

Nothing™-boxes was designed and manufactured in time for the campaign to go live in the middle of January. The box was featured in all media platforms. First we talked about it in OOH, print, TV, display banners. Then we made Nothing™ real and allowed people to purchase boxes in pop-up shops, retail placement and on a webshop/campaign site.

Daily downloads of the app tripled during the campaign period.

Use of one of the apps main features, “saving goals”, doubled during the campaign period.

For the first time in many years, Norway’s spending on consumer products decreased in the month of January. Whether we had anything to do with it or not, we’re sure our efforts didn’t hurt.