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

The problem with false discounts is a widely spread phenomenon and has its peaks during Black Friday and Christmas. Angry clients report it, the media writes about it, but nothing really changes. This short-term behavior taints the whole industry. For a small player like Pause, this is bad. Really bad. We needed to find a way of talking about discounts, but not as the big dragons do. The idea was to send the discounts as cash straight into the client’s pocket. In advance.

Creative Execution

We invented a brand new media channel. Using the well-established Swedish payment service Swish, commonly used to send money between friends, families and companies, Pause sent money to its clients 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 clients. The campaign started on April the 6th and will continue to June 2016.

The trust from the clients where overwhelming. The campaign was a huge success. Breaking even in 2 days. Sales up +60% compared to last years promotion.

In short: Pause sent cash straight into the client’s pocket. In advance. 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.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

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 clients 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 clients 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.