Entertaining or amusing.. these are the first words that might come to mind when seeing various television commercials. Commercials are often funny and sometimes imaginative, but  can firms met the expectations created in these commercials? Dutch telecom provider KPN leaves nothing to chance after broadcasting the 4G television campaign and involved the customers in an original way to test it.

The campaign
In the summer of 2013 the 4G network covered half of the Netherlands. KPN started a huge campaign to promote the 4G principle. The telecommunication service provider started a television campaign. In this commercial you can see father and son sky diving. During the jump, the father is making a video of his son, who is screaming extremely loud.  But guess what.. the father not only made a video during the jump, he also shared their sky dive experience on the internet. After the parachute opened to slow down, the video clip already received 51 likes.
See commercial:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmExZEvHi2M

Is this really possible?
After seeing the campaign people started to wonder if it is really possible to make use of the 4G network while sky diving. KPN wanted to do some research on this and involve their customers at the same time. So, they invited a few heavy internet users and besides bloggers of influential websites to test this. The test was conducted in Rotterdam, Teuge and Texel by fifteen participants. After the jump the 4G experience was published online on divers blog sites to create buzz for the brand and enhance the KPN consumer experience. The action was called: ”Spring mee met 4G” (Jump along with 4G). See experience: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emVOO9EUF1c

Reviewing ‘Spring mee met 4G’
In my opinion this idea was a smart move. In short, an innovative and creative way of customer involvement and enhancing the consumer experience. The general YouTube video of the action received 2.402 views, the individual YouTube videos of the participants around the 7.000 views per video and the announcement on Facebook 121.707 likes. However, if I was in the marketing team I would have done it differently.  In my opinion the experience could have had much more effect by slightly change the setup of the ‘Spring mee met 4G’ action.  KPN invited fifteen bloggers of influential websites, but there would be a higher level of customer involvement, in my opinion, if each KPN customer also had a chance to win the sky dive experience. How awesome is it, if your telecom provider gives you the opportunity to test the 4G network in spectacular way? KPN could have devised an online contest (on Facebook and the KPN website) for KPN customers. For example, let them be creative. Let them creatively answer the question: ”How would you use the 4G network during your sky dive?” The fifteen most original or creative customers win the sky dive.

This blog is based on information shared by Judith Damveld (of the company JD-C) on the frankwatching.com website. In this blog post 5 co-creation success stories were shared. Source: http://www.frankwatching.com/archive/2013/09/24/co-creatie-vijf-succesverhalen-van-retailers/

Melanie Ivangh (401899)