Virgin Media O2 set us the challenge of getting people talking about scams.
No easy feat.
The challenge with fraud and scams, y’see, is that no one wants to talk about there. There’s a weird stigma that means that the embarrassment and self-recrimination (“how could I have been so silly?”) means that we don’t tend to want to talk about our experiences. In turn that means that scams don’t get reported and the whole messy cycle tends to repeat.
So we really did need to get people to open up.
Which is why we alighted upon the insight that one place we know people love to have a chat is the pub.
What better way to get people talking about scams, we thought to ourselves, than to make the very first Virgin Media O2-branded beer? We could get people to come together and talk about the issue over a pint.
That’s how (and why) a beer – named Crafty Lager – was created.
The cans featured tips and advice on how to avoid falling victim to crafty scammers, and the national number to report any suspected scams to (which is 7726 in case you wondered).
We launched the beer with the help of actor Ross Kemp, who took to social media and spoke to a range of media to spread the word.
The beers were distributed to pubs across the UK – which people could claim for free by going in and quoting “7726” at the bar.
The media loved the whole thing and we landed some phenomenal coverage – around 170 pieces of coverage all-in thanks to some media-handling that was as crafty as our beer. What’s more we reached well over 15 million people and … most of all … we got people talking about scams.
Cheers to that!
