CES Activations
T-Mobile knows CES is a crowded landscape, so throughout the years they’ve asked for our help in producing content and experiences that challenge the status quo in a way that is defiant, playful and impossible to forget.
Challenge
Our work with T-Mobile began in 2013 when they needed to grow. Their revenues were falling and customers were leaving. And worse, they were not differentiated in the market, which didn’t help their growth game. So the company decided to shake things up and do something very different. They broke all the rules and launched Un-carrier at CES 2013. This meant:
- No more contracts
- Phone upgrades whenever you want
- No more hidden fees
- Unlimited everything
They asked us to use experiences to carry their new message to the press and customers with the goal of driving brand awareness. They felt that if people experienced the Un-carrier, there would be a radical reassessment of the brand – which was exactly what they needed.
Idea and experience
For the Un-carrier launch at CES 2013, we turned the press event on its head and the press became the consumer. Using museum-quality installations, immersive projection, hidden demos and a staged reveal to explain the problem and show how getting rid of contracts was the first Un-carrier move, we walked them through the pain of being a wireless customer.
For CES 2014, we launched Un-carrier 4.0, Contract Freedom. At this small press-only event, the design was simple – we used one large screen to highlight the success over the past 2 years and clearly communicated why Contract Freedom would benefit customers and the entire wireless industry.
And most recently, we crafted a uniquely powerful magenta space to reflect the T-Mobile brand and Un-carrier attitude with bold, clean lighting, staging and visuals at CES 2017. Here we launched Un-carrier Next, which outlined the “new rules” – completely transparent pricing, simplified offerings and no changes ever to a plan. The set design reflected “transparency” and we used the team from SNL’s Weekend Update to set the tone.
At each Un-carrier event, we produced graphics and dynamic videos paired with live, scripted segments to bring the message home.
Impact
We imagined the template for the Un-carrier move – something T-Mobile found so successful they used it and Jack over and over again to make announcements, drive media attention and reach customers in breakthrough ways at CES and beyond.