SUNDAY GRANNIES

Short List
TitleSUNDAY GRANNIES
BrandVODAFONE ROMANIA
Product/ServiceTELECOMMUNICATIONS
Category C02. Use of Social in a PR campaign
Entrant Company McCANN ERICKSON Bucharest, ROMANIA
Advertising Agency McCANN ERICKSON Bucharest, ROMANIA
Media Agency UM ROMANIA Bucharest, ROMANIA
Credits
Name Company Position
ADRIAN BOTAN BV Mccann Erickson CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER
CATALIN DOBRE BV Mccann Erickson EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR
RUXANDRA PAPUC BV Mccann Erickson COPYWRITER
DANIEL STRUGARIU BV Mccann Erickson ART DIRECTOR
DANA HOGEA BV Mccann Erickson CLIENT SERVICE DIRECTOR
DOINA IONESCU BV Mccann Erickson ACCOUND DIRECTOR
CARMEN MARIN BV Mccann Erickson ACCOUNT MANAGER
CORNEL CRIHANA UM ROMANIA ACCOUNT MANAGER
CARMEN BISTRIAN BV Mccann Erickson PR MANAGER
VICTOR CROITORU UM ROMANIA MEDIA DIRECTOR

The Campaign

We launched the social experiment that fights loneliness among old people by putting Facebook in the hands of two grannies. They used it to invite students who miss home cooked meals to their Sunday lunch. They just posted the menu and students booked a chair. We made a documentary showing how their lives started to change and we put it on TV. Soon their lonely apartment became the hottest lunch place in town. Even celebrities like no.3 WTA tennis player Simona Halep or a MasterChef judge booked a seat. Grannies recipes became so famous they got their own cooking show and had their sweets make it to the stores. Having hundreds of messages congratulating the initiative, we launched a Facebook app where any granny can organize her own pop-up lunch. Grannies across the country joined in and their lonely homes became joyful again.

The Brief

In the Fall of 2014, a historic event happened in the Romanian Telco: the German operator Telekom entered the market, integrating two of the already important players into the most powerful group in the category. They launched with lavish spending, but unremarkable offers. Since Romania is a value market, people quickly overcame the initial awe, turning to disappointment and complaint. Vodafone couldn’t have hoped for a better opportunity to strike back. For years, the brand had communicated about the personal and collective progress of Romanians through technology, building strong associations to national values.

Execution

In order to prove that technology can help anyone improve his life, we launched a social experiment that fights loneliness among the hundreds of thousands of old people in Romania who live in solitude. We put Facebook in the hands of two lonely grannies who loved to cook, but had no one to share their meals with, and brought them together with students who missed the traditional Sunday goodies. The Grannies posted the menu and students book a chair at their tables, bringing joy to their lonely home.

The Sunday Grannies achieved over 380MM media impressions, for a 98,7% reach. Over 430,000 fans joined their Facebook page. The thrilling social outcome was a triple rate of Facebook adoption for seniors, for the duration of our campaign. This drove an impressive 20% increase in the total number of Facebook accounts owned by people over 65 years in Romania. Moreover, Vodafone brand KPIs showed significant improvements in Simplicity (+9%) and Customer Service (+7%), attributes which were directly connected to the Grannies’ demonstrations.

The Strategy

Vodafone builds its communication on a feeling of “Romanian empowerment”, using real people, not actors, to demonstrate how its products can improve anybody’s life. Since smartphone penetration had been steadily increasing, it was becoming increasingly difficult to find credible characters for the smartphone non-user. So we turned our attention to the least likely users of technology – elders – only to uncover a very serious social problem. In Romania, hundreds of thousands of seniors live in complete loneliness, isolated in small apartments. Could Vodafone do anything about this? We set up a social experiment in order to connect seniors to the young generation by something they could both relate to: home cooked meals. For the elderly, cooking is part of the daily routine. For the young, it’s a rare delicacy. And so, cooking became a bridge between generations and grounds for refreshing social interaction.