Four volunteers were equipped with a custom-built lag machine that could adjust video resolution and simulate real-time buffering and delay. The experiment demonstrated how everyday tasks became extraordinary hard with real-time lag, and featured the unique option to switch views, giving users the possibility to experience the experiment through the eyes of the volunteers. But with virtually no media budget, we had to find a way into the social feeds of our target audience. So we premiered the experiment on YouTube and carefully selected sites where they spend a lot of time, and lag is a hot and recurrent topic.
The goal to increase awareness by 5 percentage was exceeded by 40%, the goal to increase preference by 5 percentage was exceeded by 100% and the sales have already increased with 54%, exceeding the goal of 15% within six months.
Within 24 hours, the experiment had over 1 million views and was featured on all major technology and gaming sites around the world. As of today, the Living with Lag Experiment have generated over 5.6 millions views in 230 countries, 78 million impressions, 333,000+ social actions, an earned media value of €3.3 million, exceeding the digital media investment by 21000%.
On a market that is dominated by national telecom giants, the local fiber broadband provider ume.net wanted to increase their awareness and market shares. But due to its modest size and budget they needed to do something that would generate widespread attention. In a world where many have accepted delays, buffering and other symptoms of slow connection online (a.k.a lag), we chose to focus on ume.net’s product benefit - one of the world’s fastest internet connections. We targeted an audience that suffers the most from internet disturbances; the early adopters of tech and gaming - an authoritative group on the internet that are the first to share new and relevant content. To get their attention we had to create something unique and relatable. So we combined a recurrent problem in their online life with state-of-the-art technology to demonstrate what reality would look like with slow internet connection.