PROMISES CAMPAIGN DEMONSTRATES BENEFITS MERGER

We come up with the ‘Promises’ campaign, meant to specify the benefits of the intended merger between T-Mobile Netherlands and Tele2, and demonstrate those to politicians, promotors, the media, and finally the general public. Our goal was to change the opinion of the decision makers regarding the merger, ie the European Commission, from ‘doubtful’ to ‘positive’.

The idea of reducing thousands of pages of formal documents to five clear promises to the Dutch consumer proved to be an act of genius. It helped us demonstrate how the merger would not diminish competition on the market, and would in fact yield important benefits for the consumer as well as the private sector.

Femina Dolfsma
Head of Corporate Communications at T-Mobile Netherlands

At the center of this campaign are five ‘Promises’, built around the fact that T-Mobile Netherlands believes that if anything, the Dutch consumer deserves more competition on the telecom market. Up till now, that market has been dominated by two major players: KPN and VodafoneZiggo. The merger between T-Mobile and Tele2 could go against this duopoly.

The five promises:

1. T-Mobile Netherlands will be the first to launch 5G throughout all of the Netherlands
2. T-Mobile Netherlands will roll out its’ own fiber network without raising the price for internet for three years, barring inflation
3. T-Mobile Netherlands will provide unlimited data from Tele2 for no more than 25 euros for another three years
4. T-Mobile Netherlands promises its clients freedom of contract by introducing subscriptions that you can cancel monthly
5. T-Mobile Netherlands will ensure that 100MPBS broadband speed becomes available for everyone, to smooth out digital differences in the Netherlands.

Hidden within the way we presented every promise, there was a joke, to point out, using a bit of humor, that the other parties on the market are lazy, and not really competing But we also demonstrated that T-Mobile Netherlands and Tele2 were in fact very serious, by placing a full-page ad in national newspapers in which we publicly announced that we were planning to shake up the telecom market.

To keep the focus on our plan over an extended period of time, we used an integrated communication strategy, reaching every single target audience. We organized a sensational event in the direct line of vision of the parliament, organized press meetings for relevant journalists, sent out press releases, and shared videos, ads and posts, online and on social media.

Internally, we made sure that employees of the fusing companies were well-informed and enthusiastic about the campaign.

The merger takes place, partly thanks to our campaign. In the permission motivation by the European Commission, the Promises campaign is referred to as a ‘game changer’. Even though the campaign isn’t necessarily aimed at consumers, 30% of all consumers between the ages of 18 and 64 indicated that they saw the campaign, and have a positive attitude towards it. Politicians and journalists are all positive about the intended merger.