Melodifestivalen – the annual Swedish Eurovision Song Contest – is watched by one third of the Swedish population. It’s one of the most covered medial events of the year, dominating social media as well.

Telenor, a leading mobile carrier, was a main sponsor to this years’ contest. With the sponsorship, Telenor wanted to build the brand as a trustworthy provider of insights around how Swedish families use smartphones and tablets in front of the TV.

Taking inspiration from the artists’ exclusive space behind the scene, Green Room, we wanted to create something as exclusive for the media. Our solution became Telenor BlueRoom: a digital newsroom featuring real-time social media measuring and social media charts for the contests’ artists, songs, hosts, contest cities and much more. Only handpicked journalists, bloggers and key opinion leaders received personal accreditation to the site.

We knew covering the contest was hectic with tight deadlines, so the BlueRoom was designed so that anyone who wanted to grab information on-the-fly could download live charts and data – all ready to use. Over 350 000 tweets were used to create content in the Telenor BlueRoom. It resulted in over 120 media impacts in print, online and social media outlets. Even the official Melodifestivalen site used Telenor’s content online. All in all, the total reach became over 45 million people, with an estimated earned media value of €1.000.000. Telenor showed they could deliver the best insights around families and their behaviour in front of the TV during the contest.

The qualitative objective of the campaign was to make Telenor the main source of information regarding social media buzz, insights and trends connected to the contest. Via this information we also wanted to consolidate that they were in fact experts within second screen knowledge. All this was to be done through media publicity.

Quantitative objectives were:

- Establish relations with 15 key journalists to credit Telenor as a source of information.

- Achieve 30 media impacts with Telenor as source during the six-week period of the contest.

The overall target audience of the campaign was families watching and following Melodifestivalen.

- Over 120 media impacts in leading print, digital and social media outlets (an increase of 300% compared to the initial goal).

- 45 key journalists were accredited to the site, which resulted in stronger media relations for Telenor (an increase of 200% compared to the initial goal)

- The total reach of the campaign became over 45.000.000 people. There weren’t any set goals regarding reach, but since Sweden consists of approximately 9.5 million people, this number is pretty extraordinary.

- There were no goals set concerning earned media value. However, Sweden’s biggest independent market research firm has, based on the media impressions, estimated that the impact of the campaign had an earned media value of around €1.000.000.

We started our work with the Telenor BlueRoom about two months before the contest started. The site was designed so that its users could grab everything they needed on-the-fly: charts and data were downloadable within a few clicks, all free to use.

We then identified the most important journalists/bloggers. We contacted every major news outlet in Sweden, making sure we had names and contact details for the people we wanted to target. In order to establish a personal connection, each journalist/blogger was contacted individually, and each one got a personal login to the site.

During Thursdays and Fridays we sent out the best insights from BlueRoom gathered during the week. Each Sunday (the day after the contests), a press release with the most interesting insights, trends and other highlights was dispatched.

Also, depending on what we saw was trending, we updated the charts to keep the service fresh and up-to-date.

Telenor, a major mobile carrier, was one of Melodifestivalen’s – the Swedish Eurovision Song Contest – main sponsors this year. It’s watched by one third of the Swedish population every Saturday during it’s six week course, with over 12 000 related articles published during 2013.

Telenor wanted to use the sponsorship to build their brand as a trustworthy provider of insights around how families use smartphones and tablets as a second screen in front of the TV. We needed something special in order to get Telenor and their message across during an extremely cluttered and hectic time in Swedish media.

We knew the contest is an extremely hectic time for journalists and bloggers covering it, making it very difficult for a sponsor to be heard. We also knew an event of this magnitude would cause a lot of buzz in social media. This is where Telenor would tap in to create content that the media would find interesting and include in articles.

By creating something exclusive that they could use and benefit from, we wanted to show that Telenor really could add relevant and exciting information the media didn't have access to. This would set a foundation where Telenor could build both longer and stronger media relations.

Inspired by the behind-the-scenes Green Room for artists, we created the Telenor BlueRoom: a digital newsroom, exclusively created for journalists and bloggers, featuring real-time social media measuring and social media charts for the contests’ artists, songs, hosts, contest cities and much more.