NOTHING™

TitleNOTHING™
BrandDNB
Product/ServiceSPARE (SAVINGS APP)
Category A11. Consumer Services
Entrant TRY REKLAME Oslo, NORWAY
Idea Creation TRY REKLAME Oslo, NORWAY
Media Placement VIZEUM Oslo, NORWAY
Production APT Oslo, NORWAY
Production 2 EINAR FILM & FORTELLINGER Oslo, NORWAY
Additional Company DNB ITV Oslo, NORWAY
Credits
Name Company Position
Sebastian Rasch Try Art Director
Mads Rolland Krogh Try Copywriter
Egil Pay Try Art Director
Lars Joachim Grimstad Try Copywriter
Preben Moan TRY Art Director
Camilla Bjørnhaug TRY Copywriter
Anette Bellika Finnager Try Art Director
Thea Bjørndal Iversen TRY Copywriter
Jeppe Gjesti Try Designer
Kristina Skogen Try Account manager
Arne Eggen Try Account Director

Why is this work relevant for Direct?

By making buying nothing cooler than buying something, the campaign was able to get people excited about saving and more conscious about the consequences of their consumer habits. By creating a physical product based on the idea of buying nothing and advertising and selling it like a real product we were able to create a measurable effect on how much our audience was saving.

Background

The biggest bank in Norway, DNB, asked us to create a campaign for their savings app ”Spare” (Save). There was only one issue: The campaign was set to launch in the middle of January, Norway’s biggest and ever-increasing annual sales month. Thus, our challenge was to break through the noise of deal-pushing advertising to talk about the exact opposite thing; saving. The objective was clear: Get people to download and use the app for saving.

Describe the creative idea

Something happens to you when there’s a lot of sales. You want to buy something. No, you NEED to buy something. Even if you don’t need the thing you’re buying. So how do you make people question their shopping-habits and consider saving instead? We took the challenge head on by launching a competing product: Nothing™ – the product that’s designed to make it easier to put money in your savings account, while still quenching the thirst for shopping. Simply put, it’s a sexy box of air that you could purchase by saving money. Nothing™ was introduced with a big launch-campaign that attacked consumer-culture as much as it praised itself. And with a web-shop, pop-up shops, and retail placement, we made it possible for people to “buy” a physical box of Nothing™ (by saving money in the “Save”-app).

Describe the strategy

The target audience was fairly wide: Men and women aged 18-40 with a certain amount of money to spend/save. They are happy to spend money on new things, buy the newest iPhone almost every year, and have plenty of clothes in the closet they never wear. In essence: Grown people who buy things they don’t really need, whether they’re aware of the fact or not. The approach became a combination of sympathy and guilt-tripping. “We get that it’s tempting, but be real, you don’t need any of this”. We spoke to them when and where it mattered the most: Malls, shopping areas, online and in-between sales-promoting commercials on TV. Most importantly, we made Nothing™ look cool, and people wanted it. So the call to action was simple: "Buy Nothing™, save more." And the only way people could get their hands on a box was to save in DNB's app.

Describe the execution

The campaign was rolled out in the middle of January and lasted for three weeks. It started with commercials on TV and online, big outdoor ads, print and display banners. After a few days of talking, we opened the web-shop, pop-up shop and started actually "selling" Nothing™. The campaign was mostly centered around Oslo. All the big outdoor placements as well as the pop-up shops were located here, while the web-shop enabled anyone around the country to participate. We shipped boxes to everyone who ordered online, and sold it over the counter in the pop-up shops and in-store.

List the results

Daily downloads of the app tripled during the campaign period. Use of one of the apps main features, “saving goals”, doubled during the campaign period. For the first time in many years, Norway’s spending on consumer products decreased in the month of January. Whether we had anything to do with it or not, we’re sure our efforts didn’t hurt.