The client, Sonera, is the leading mobile operator in Finland with a market share of almost 60%. They launch new mobile servicesat a rapid pace, at least once a month.

THE PROMLEM: People were not adopting new services anymore, but were losing interest in the never ending launches.

THE OTHER PROBLEM: Sonera’s market share was weakest among young adults and teenagers – among the people who are the first to adopt new services, but tend to favor operators that are competing more with price and less with the variety of services provided.

Our job was to awake people’s interest in Sonera mobile services again.

To make them see that Sonera mobile services are really better than the services other operators offer. Our job was to be radical and convincing at the same time. Our creative solution was not to advertise the services themselves but todo something so interesting that people will want to find out what it isall about. SONJA, the mysterious hacker was born.

SONJA broke into commercial breaks. We used well-known TV commercials done for our other clients and inserted the “Sonja interference” into them.

People were watching for example a beer commercial and all of the sudden there seemed to be something wrong with the TV or the signal. Just when you started to get annoyed about it, a tag appeared on screen: WWW.SONJAWASHERE.COM.

Nothing more was explained. The same thing happened with commercials for margarine, coffee, postal services, football betting etc. (two different versions per ad). In some TV channels Sonja broke into TV programs too.

Lots of people became curious enough to visit Sonja’s site. There they were challenged to play a computer game against Sonja using the latest Sonera mobile services. Our creative solution was not to advertise the services themselves but todo something so interesting that people will want to find out what it isall about. SONJA, the mysterious hacker was born.

SONJA broke into commercial breaks. We used well-known TV commercials done for our other clients and inserted the “Sonja interference” into them.

People were watching for example a beer commercial and all of the sudden there seemed to be something wrong with the TV or the signal. Just when you started to get annoyed about it, a tag appeared on screen: WWW.SONJAWASHERE.COM.

Nothing more was explained. The same thing happened with commercials for margarine, coffee, postal services, football betting etc. (two different versions per ad). In some TV channels Sonja broke into TV programs too.

Lots of people became curious enough to visit Sonja’s site. There they were challenged to play a computer game against Sonja using the latest Sonera mobile services.

The lesson to be learned from Sonja is that when you start to think beyond making just another ad, you can achieve results that are difficult to reach by traditional means of advertising. This campaign is a revolutionizing example of an innovative way to cut through the clutter of advertising that is poured over us every day.

TV and internet were used in a new innovative way.a) We interfered with other advertisers TV commercials inserting our message into them. b) we managed to interfere with TV programs too.

c) We made people so curious that they had no other choice than to visit the campaign site WWW.SONJAWASHERE.COM and use the services we wanted them to use. d) The result of the campaign was a dream come true: Over 50% increase in the usage of Sonera mobile services.During the campaign our internet game had three times more players than the favourite games DOOM and QUAKE combined – all the players using Sonera mobile services.

Our creative solution was not to advertise the services themselves but todo something so interesting that people will want to find out what it isall about. SONJA, the mysterious hacker was born.

SONJA broke into commercial breaks. We used well-known TV commercials done for our other clients and inserted the “Sonja interference” into them.

People were watching for example a beer commercial and all of the sudden there seemed to be something wrong with the TV or the signal. Just when you started to get annoyed about it, a tag appeared on screen: WWW.SONJAWASHERE.COM.

Nothing more was explained. The same thing happened with commercials for margarine, coffee, postal services, football betting etc. (two different versions per ad). In some TV channels Sonja broke into TV programs too.

Lots of people became curious enough to visit Sonja’s site. There they were challenged to play a computer game against Sonja using the latest Sonera mobile services.

The lesson to be learned from Sonja is that when you start to think beyond making just another ad, you can achieve results that are difficult to reach by traditional means of advertising.