Motorola — the company that invented the cell phone — thinks it’s time for a little phone-life balance.

Next time you take a walk outside, look around. Almost everyone you see will be looking at their phone.

When Motorola invented the cellphone 45 years ago, they knew it could bring us closer to those who are far away. But now, mobile seems to be separating us from the people right in front of us.

So while our competition was busy trying to find more ways for people to engage with their phones, Motorola –the challenger brand in the category — wanted to tell a different story. As a tech brand, innovation is important, but so are the people and experiences around us.

We spread our messaging through academic studies, social experiments, documentary videos and an online quiz where people could check their smartphone behavior and learn how to improve it.

To begin, we wanted to better understand the issue. So we partnered with Dr. Nancy Etcoff, an expert of mind-brain behavior at Harvard to publish a groundbreaking new study where we found that “that “33% of people prioritize their phone over people they care about.”

Then we raised awareness around the problem by looking at how real people on real vacations were spending their trips.

To show people how much they’re missing when they’re staring at their screen, we used data captured by measuring brain waves to visualize the difference.

And in New York City, Motorola created hyper-realistic statues and placed

them at key locations, so everyone could recognize themselves and rethink

how they interact with their phone.

Everything we did pointed people to our phone-life balance quiz, where

they could check their smartphone behavior and learn how to improve it.

Phone-life balance is imperative and people are starting to take notice. In North America, our phone-life balance study, garnered coverage in publications like TWICE and Techaeris. Additionally, Media Post shared “Hello Vacation” and The Today Show featured an entire segment dedicated to talking about the impacts of having phone-life balance. Or not having it, for that matter.

Worldwide, publications from The Times of India to Argentina’s Tanrina! to Vietnam’s Giao Báo wrote about the issue.

To date, there have been a total of 360 earned placements globally in a combination of general and technology publication. Altogether, Motorola’s message has garnered over one billion impressions worldwide. We can only anticipate this number to grow as the conversation continues around the effects of smartphones on relationships

The press mentions were either positive or factual in nature with none disagreeing criticizing Motorola’s attempt to create awareness of this issue.