In May 2014 Swisscom and Samsung joined forces to launch the new Samsung Galaxy S5 – the world’s first smartphone that can measure your pulse with an integrated heart rate sensor.

A special webpage invited the bravest Swiss people to test this new feature at a unique event: The S5 Pulse Challenge. A game with only one rule: Keep your heart rate under 100 bpm to win the S5.

The contestants were thrown into the most unnerving and terrifying experiment to see how much they could take. Who is able to keep their heart rate stable whilst facing the scariest situations – and who will crack?

They encountered rats, witches, maniac wrestlers, an eerie children’s choir and a host of other ghastly threats. While the contestants tried to stay calm and control their pulse, people all over Switzerland joined the event via live-streaming banners on the biggest Swiss news sites. On the microsite users could experience the hair-raising challenge from multiple angles, and support contestants in the game with messages tagged with #s5challenge.

After the event, a documentary film on YouTube went viral within a few days helping the campaign to spread around the world, making people’s hearts beat faster for the Samsung Galaxy S5 - and honoring the 8 brave souls who were able to stand up to the S5 Pulse Challenge.

The Samsung Galaxy S5 is the world’s first smartphone with a built-in heart rate sensor. We launched the new S5 in Switzerland by creating the ultimate challenge: Keep your heart rate under 100 bpm to win the S5.

Contestants were thrown into terrifying situations to see if they could stay calm.

They faced rats, witches, maniac wrestlers and a host of other ghastly threats.

While they tried to keep cool, the audience watched the game online as live banners streamed the challenge to major Swiss websites bringing the viewers to a microsite where they could participate and win the S5.

The Swisscom S5 Pulse Challenge gathered 3,18 million unique views with more than 9,8 million ad media contacts, and 4,375 million ad impressions on Facebook.

Overall, attracting the attention of every third Swiss person and with an average of 3 contacts per person.

More than 1,4 million people watched the S5 Pulse Challenge via livestream and the film that landed on Youtube after the event got over 400.000 views.

The play-to-end rate was 78% and the average viewing time amounted to 1:45 min.

The campaign boosted awareness resulting in the S5 becoming a highly requested bestseller in the Swisscom stores.