Our work

WOM: Let’s Call the Firing Squad and Roast Our Brand Manager on Live Tv

Challenge: Being Congruent with Your Transparency Policies, Even when You Are Not Doing Perfect

Allegedly for brands there’s nothing more important than customers’ opinions, right? Unless you’re complaining publicly, after the frustration of trying to solve an issue through their formally established and bureaucratic channels, only to get blocked at the end by the social media clerk on duty.

Being congruent in the telecommunications arena is not easy when your brand promise is around transparency, honesty, and no bullshitting. Especially when you’re not doing it perfectly and you have some technical and operational flaws still to handle. But the worst that can happen to a brand like WOM, trying to play different, is the risk that people start to put them in the same bag as others.

Solution: When There Is Nothing Left to Burn You Have to Set Yourself on Fire

We needed to do something radical, and so we did. Through social listening we discovered that more than 60% of negative comments from the market were reportedly around three main issues: signal, coverage, and service. So, we decided to talk openly with our users about those issues and let them know, at least, that we’re listening to them and working to solve those problems.

We invited three famous local comedians and created a series of 4 chapters to roast publicly our Brand Manager. During the programs, one by one, the comedians read out loud the most mean, aggressive, ironic, and hateful user comments extracted from our listening reports. They turned them into acid jokes while our Brand Manager had the opportunity to listen to users frustrations and tried to convey explanations or solutions for the complaints in question.

Results: Sometimes Negativity Just Needs to Be Drained

The disruptive idea behind this campaign grabbed the attention of general public and gained countless spontaneous mentions from traditional media, journalists, influencers and users, all of them applauding the decision of the company to address publicly and not try to hide their problems. In terms of impact in business and with users, here are some results:

  • +30 million views of the 4 chapters combined (in Colombia, a country with a population of 51 million)
  • +33 thousand social media interactions with users
  • A 30% decrease in social media negative sentiment after the first chapter aired.

Awards

Campaign released in 2022. Awards to be announced in the months to come.