Title	DISCOUNT IS KING
Brand	PAUSE HOME ENTERTAINMENT
Product/Service	HIFI CHAIN
Category	C02. Use of Mobile
Entrant	ÅKESTAM HOLST Stockholm, SWEDEN
Idea Creation	ÅKESTAM HOLST Stockholm, SWEDEN
Media Placement	ÅKESTAM HOLST Stockholm, SWEDEN
PR	ÅKESTAM HOLST Stockholm, SWEDEN
Production	ÅKESTAM HOLST Stockholm, SWEDEN

Name	Company	Position
Magnus Jakobsson	Åkestam Holst	Creative Director
Adam Reuterskiöld	Åkestam Holst	Copywriter
Joakim Khoury	Åkestam Holst	Art Director
Henrik Adenskog	Åkestam Holst	Account Director
Alex Picha	Åkestam Holst	Digital Producer
Fredrik Lindh	Åkestam Holst	Front-end Developer
Kalle Peterz	Åkestam Holst	Back-end Developer
Eric Karlsson	Åkestam Holst	Motion Director

The Campaign

Pause sent cash straight into the client’s pocket by using the mobile money transfer app Swish. The clients were free to do whatever they wanted with the money. With Swish, a mobile app very popular in Sweden that allows you to send money to friends and companies using your mobile, Pause sent the discount you save in advance. This means that the campaign didn’t only created a unique bond to the clients since they were free to do whatever they wanted with the money, the campaign also created a unique brand new media channel straight into the clients’ pockets.

Creative Execution

In short: Pause sent cash straight into the client’s pocket. Using the well-established Swedish payment service Swish, commonly used to send money between friends, families and companies, Pause sent money to its customers in advance. Since it was actual money, you were free to do whatever you wanted with the money. Buy flowers to your home, grab a beer or get yourself a new shirt – all that was okay. When you get money from someone, you get a notification and a message. We used this to get our message and discount across to the customers. We invented a brand new media channel. The campaign started on April the 6th and will continue to June 2016.

Results

The trust from the clients where overwhelming. The campaign was a huge success. Breaking even in 2 days. Over 75% of the discounted receivers also bought the discounted items.

By sending actual money in advance that people could use immediately, the campaign Discount is king is not just a new way of using discounts, it’s also a completely new media channel that goes straight into the target groups’ wallets.

Pause is a small chain of hi-fi stores, providing great service and state-of-the art stereo equipment to real sound lovers – sometimes at a discount. But its big competitors – the big box stores – aggressively market fake sales and discounts, where they present their original prices or ridiculously small reductions as if they were a discount. Thus, to create trust in a category where all trust had been eroded, Pause decided to do something disruptive: Send their customers real money in advance of the Pause sale. No strings attached. By using a personal medium to send their discount, and trusting that their loyal customers would use it in their stores, Pause could stand out from the category, generate PR and attention, and start rebuilding trust and interest in Pause’s sales. And show that Pause is the real deal in a category of fakes.