How can you prove the product benefit, ”this phone takes better pictures in the dark”? This was our challenge when Sony Ericsson launched Xperia ray in the Nordic market. The Nordic countries have long periods of darkness during several months each year, a perfect time for us to show the quality of the Xperia-ray camera. Since the camera defies darkness, we wanted people to do that as well, by sending greetings to their loved ones. We launched the interactive idea through a huge screen on Stureplan, Stockholm’s equivalent to Times Square. People could send a greeting to the screen and Xperia ray captured the greeting and sent it via SMS or e-mail to the receiver. Xperia ray made people defy the darkness.Defy the darkness is a highly relevant campaign because it uses the new mechanics and logics of the PR-landscape. It engages consumers with new technology and connects it with the product.

Our campaign was centered on a large outdoor LED screen in the city centre of Stockholm. Consumers were instructed to visit www.trotsamorkret.se (www.defythedarkness.se) and send a message to someone they cared for. The message was then shown on the screen, and Xperia ray took a snapshot of the message and sent it to the receiver via e-mail or SMS.To support the campaign, we bought banners in relevant news outlets where the consumers could send their greetings, messages or even marriage-proposals directly from the interactive banner.Most of all, we focused on PR in a digital context. As both screens were placed in highly-visible areas, where many influential people move around each day, we sent a tailored greeting to the top-tier field of Swedish bloggers, mostly focusing on female fashion-bloggers and regular lifestyle-blogs.

More than 14m impressions;More than 3,000 greetings;People spent more than 2 minutes and 40 seconds on the site;11 marriage proposals;399 people wrote, ”I love you”.