Oh the horror! Three Mobile spoofs horror classics to ‘walk the talk’ on brand purpose

There’s a “very formulaic way” of promoting handsets that the mobile network wants to get away from, its director of brand and communications Lianne Norry told The Drum. Consequently, it got LG to embrace things that go bump in the night, in arguably its riskiest ad to date.

Three’s Jackson the puppet is shown alongside his human companion doing one of the biggest horror movie tropes - venturing into the woods alone. The two friends document the experience, complete with shocks and scares, using LG’s smartphone video player, while Jackson takes the time to highlight some of the phone’s other key features.

The ad is peppered with nods to horrors like Dark Water and the Blair Witch Project, while a tense encounter in a haunted house gives off an Exorcist vibe. Its themes could be become controversial should viewers fail to the funny side, which Three has tried to counter by buying post-Watershed media and only advertising before films for audiences such as Ted 2 and Magic Mike XXL.

Risks aren’t just being taken creatively on the campaign but also in terms of media planning. It’s the first time the brand will have launched an ad first on social media tomorrow (31 July), while a four minute director’s cut version will appear on YouTube later in the evening.

“One of the things we really felt we needed to do this time was rather than just create a very entertaining piece of film, we needed a concept that said something about who we are as a brand. It’s no good making promises if you don’t walk the talk. We’ve shown that there’s a better way when we launched the campaign a few weeks back and now we’re trying to demonstrate it,” said Norry.

Spurred by the successive successes of its Pony, Kitten and now Jackson the puppet concepts, Three wants more risk-taking from its marketing in order to craft a premium brand.

“We want to move away from the value end of price and into showing stronger reasons for potential customers to join us that are intrinsically tied to the brand and how we treat customers,” added Norry. Whether it’s the fact it offers free roaming or free 4G, Three’s horror homage offers some idea as to how its brand will be realised moving forward under the strategy.

It serves as the latest phase of what Norry described as a “long-term” brand platform that launched earlier this year - effectively telling people ‘we’re not as bad as you think we are’. While she was unable to comment on Three’s uncertain future given its parent company Hutchison’s decision to purchase O2 earlier in the year is subject to European regulatory approval, she said the brand is strong.

On the back of last month’s campaign the brand achieved 24 per cent message penetration, claimed Norry, with over 4.5 million people watched the 90-second ad on YouTube.

Three’s dancing Pony and singing Kitten ads in 2013 and 2014 respectively were enough to get people thinking about what Three represents though the ‘Make it Right’ strategy will channel marketing around its commitment to the customer.

The mobile network hopes to exploit the apathy many consumers have toward mobile networks. One in five users don’t trust the mobile industry, according to Three. “It feels like the mobile industry is broken,” said Norry. "Customers are inherently suspicious about what mobile networks are doing and there’s a high level of mistrust. There’s a perfect storm for someone in the industry to go we recognise things are not great and are going to fix the problems and make it right.”