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12 Aug Decision of Mobile Vikings regarding the “Free is for…” campaign

The advertising campaign “Free is for…” by Mobile Vikings has been criticized for being insulting, pointless and discriminating. With this post we want to inform you on how we will use this feedback to shape the rest of our campaign.

As you can read in a previous blogpost, we received an order from JEP (Jury voor eerlijke reclame praktijken / Jury d’Ethique Publicitaire) to remove part of our campaign, both in flyers, posters and beer mats. On top of that they asked us to remove 3 of the 10 posters from our website, so users could not share them on Facebook anymore.

We received an overwhelming amount of support from our users, which feels really good. On the other hand, we also saw criticism from people that are not familiar with Mobile Vikings yet. This criticism is important to us, since those are the people we wanted to reach with our advertising campaign. We think we can draw the following lessons from all of the reactions:

1. We need to focus more on what we offer. After all, we’re the cheapest operator in Belgium.
2. Our users are what makes us strong. We need to put our fans in the spotlights.
3. People have no idea what they can do with mobile internet. We need to educate them.

We have taken the following actions:

1) Redesign of our “Win a mobile phone by sharing on Facebook” webpage

As from today, you will notice that we have redesigned the “win a mobile phone” competition. The rules stay the same: 1 chance to win a GSM for each time you share our campaign on Facebook. But we changed the layout to make room for a banner that explains what Mobile Vikings is selling (SIM cards) and to allow people to order their SIM card. We also added a page that explains the process and advantages of becoming a Mobile Vikings. This addresses the “focus on the offer” part. In the next days, we also want to add “With my GSM, I can…” (surf on Facebook, upload pictures, check the weather, etc) instruction video’s. This is to address the problem that people have no idea on what they can do with Mobile Internet on their phone. And of course, the slogans that are forbidden by JEP now carry a “CENSORED BY JEP” message.

2) Gradual phase out of the “Free is for…” campaign

Since yesterday, we stopped distributing the posters “Gratuit c’est pout les Flamands”, “Gratis is voor jeanetten” and “Gratis is for Hollanders”. We are also in the process of applying stickers “Censored by JEP” over the existing posters. We also asked the pub owner to take the forbidden beer mats out of their pubs.

We will continue to distribute the 7 remaining posters until the end of August, but we will not prolong the campaign throughout September. We feel that the (positive and negative) attention we received in the media would make it a bit strange to publish this campaign in newspapers and magazines in September.

3) Ask for your help

There is no bigger achievement for a company then having your users promote your brand. We feel that Mobile Vikings is not only us, but also you. The Mobile Vikings users form a community of internet-savy people that inspire others.

To convince the rest of Belgium that mobile internet is the coolest thing since sliced bread, we want to show them how Mobile Vikings use the internet in their everyday lives. We don’t know how yet. It can be a Mobile Vikings roadshow, it can be a new campaign with slogans invented by you, it can be a find-the-treasure contest or a Miss Viking election. We want to replace our campaign of September with something where we can put our users in the spotlights.

If you want to participate or you have an idea, just let us know. We’ll work on it together and make it rock!