Theresa Smith/Canoe.ca/Account ManagerMichelle Edwards-Boldt/Canoe.ca/Lead Designer Popularize the brand and position Solo as cool and irreverent.Highlight the ad positioning benefits “Freedom of Choice” & “Customization”.Drive traffic to both in store and online.Intrigue users by means of surprise and stand out from the crowd, given the cluttered and highly competitive nature of the category. Further entice the youth market by creating “buzz”. Strategy:Create Media opportunities that leverage teen’s current online behavior and integrate the brand - SOLO – into the experience.

Media Innovations:The Solo Zone All the content our target craves.

The two largest Canadian internet portals completely re-packaged all their teen content (games, video, MP3, chat etc.) and centralized it under one umbrella called “The Solo Zone” which was designed and branded with the Solo colours.The Much Flash Desktop Utility We conceived and commissioned Muchmusic.com (Canada’s MTV) to produce, provide content for and distribute a new desktop application - The “Much Flash Informer”. The application delivers Solo messaging and live exclusive entertainment news to the user, such as: “Britney Spears LIVE in studio today at 4 PM”.The utility resides on the teen’s computer desktop screen at all times, which gave Solo constant top of mind awareness.

Solo Says GameOne of teens’ top activities online is playing games.

We worked in partnership with Neopets.com (#1 teen site) to build and promote the Solo Says Game that featured the Solo phones and the star attraction of the site, the Neopets. Teens visit the site often to win “neopoints” to purchase food, shelter etc. for their Neopets. The Expand-o-Banner The banner was developed to expand over content. Teens could no longer avoid advertising when it engulfed their content - it broke through the clutter and drove record traffic to the Solo Zone. We were briefed by our client, Bell Mobility, on our latest challenge – make a newly branded wireless phone, Solo, relevant with a new target – teens. Given our target’s lifestyle, we naturally gravitated to the internet for this group is truly part of their lives. However, we were faced with the ongoing challenge that the popular teen sites and activities offer little or no advertising and conversely on sites with advertising teens respond poorly.Rather than abandon the medium, we decided to re-create the medium for teens!We set out to develop new opportunities that would not only reach the target but integrate the Solo brand in their online experience. The media team started from scratch and conceived multiple innovative elements and new ways of communicating with the teens online.

To help ensure success, we also took it upon ourselves to sell and develop the elements in partnership with multiple internet publishers. As with any media first, achieving successful execution was challenging; there were no existing examples to draw from, every participating site had unique requirements, internet sellers were reluctant and timelines were short. The media team successfully navigated through these obstacles and all the elements launched with unprecedented results. This submission is special because it developed a completely new way to commercially interact with teens online – comprised of not one but four media innovations that were designed to leverage teen behavior and integrate the Solo brand.

It is a great idea in its context as the innovative solutions overcame our primary challenge and exceeded all expectations for the campaign.Target insight:85%-90% of the teen segment are online. The activities in which they partake and where they spend the most time with the medium such as games, chat, entertainment and search etc, are not conducive to generating advertising response, because of their highly involving and ad free nature.Challenge: How can we build awareness and drive traffic in online environments that generally have poor propensity for response and attention?Strategy: Engage the target in a manner conducive to their surfing habits; fully integrate the brand, the target and the medium. The brand becomes the online destination and the online activity.It should be a winner because the campaign produced unprecedented results against the teen segment online of up to 50+ times greater than the industry response norm.

We were briefed by our client, Bell Mobility, on our latest challenge – make a newly branded wireless phone, Solo, relevant with a new target – teens. Given our target’s lifestyle, we naturally gravitated to the internet for this group is truly part of their lives. However, we were faced with the ongoing challenge that the popular teen sites and activities offer little or no advertising and conversely on sites with advertising teens respond poorly.Rather than abandon the medium, we decided to re-create the medium for teens!We set out to develop new opportunities that would not only reach the target but integrate the Solo brand in their online experience. The media team started from scratch and conceived multiple innovative elements and new ways of communicating with the teens online.

To help ensure success, we also took it upon ourselves to sell and develop the elements in partnership with multiple internet publishers. As with any media first, achieving successful execution was challenging; there were no existing examples to draw from, every participating site had unique requirements, internet sellers were reluctant and timelines were short. The media team successfully navigated through these obstacles and all the elements launched with unprecedented results.