A story touching millions right in the heart…

Vodafone’s global #Firsts campaign challenges people to experience something amazing for the first time, empowered by technology. We created and spread a story touching millions right in the heart: a deaf girl hearing music for the first time.

Meet Vera. A 19-year-old beautiful girl. Deaf since birth but recently able to hear again through a cochlear implant. We involved the famous Dutch musician Kyteman, a.k.a. the Mozart of pop-music, to compose the music. Together with his orchestra, a perfect match for this unique story. We gave media the chance to follow the journey in making Vera’s dream come true: her first concert. Composed by Kyteman, especially for her.

Our main challenges in PR were:

• Finding a suitable artist for the campaign. One with enough musical intelligence to compose a concert for Vera. Who has enough media traction to inspire a whole nation.

• Engaging the target group before and after the concert.

• Building and maintaining credibility for Vodafone: ensuring the story won’t feel commercial due to paid media.

Our story touched millions of people in six countries. With our PR approach we created a much bigger story than the momentum of the concert alone. We decided to create different moments of buzz, thereby making the story fly, not only in national TV shows, on the radio, in newspapers, but also in blogs online. We created maximum visibility and surpassed expectations with outstanding results on awareness as well as engagement objectives.

Start campaign: August 6th 2014

Concert: August 25th 2014

Pre-launch (3 weeks):

Introduction Vera and Kyteman. We asked Dutch artists to share their song suggestions, activating the public to share theirs too. Kyteman and Vera shared content showing their progress composing the concert.

- Introductory video

- Interview in largest national newspaper

- Artists' online videos

- Song submissions via social media (#firstconcert)

- Updates by Kyteman via social media (video content)

Launch (1 day):

- Concert

- Postings by influencers

Post launch (several months):

Due to the momentum built in the first phase, all national media wanted to cover Vera’s story.

- The biggest national TV talk show interviewed Vera and Kyteman one hour after the concert

- Mini-documentary

- Video registration of song

- Cinema commercials

- Months later on national live TV, Vera met Sam Smith: “This is one of the most amazing moments of my career”

- Total media value: €1.7 million (vs. goal of €1 mln)

- 3 national TV items (prime time), 7 radio items and over 270 publications (including The Daily Mail with a reach of 55.2 million) (vs. goal of 1 TV item)

- Sold-out concert (goal reached)

- Total reach: over 110 million impressions (goal exceeded)

- Social media reach: 7.2 million (goal exceeded)

- 99% positive engagement

- Trending topic on Twitter (twice) and Instagram

- Documentary: 1.2 million views / 5,000 interactions

- 159 publications mentioned Vodafone

- Survey results (goal reached):

o Concert improved online brand sentiment (+47%).

o More than 50% of people reached had an improved attitude towards Vodafone

o 55% of the concert attendees consider Vodafone as their future telecom provider

o 80% of people reached talked about the concert with peers

o 60% of people reached posted about the concert on social media