Mobile-phone company in Vietnam urges users to put down the phone

Client: Oppo Electronics

Agency: BBDO Vietnam 

Market: Vietnam

Campaign scope: Two TVCs (above and below) tied to the brand's sponsorship of a reality-TV show titled, Daddy, where are we going? in which father-child teams set out to accomplish certain tasks without the aid of technology.

Press release quote: Dang Quoc Cuong, Oppo marketing director: “In these competitive times, what we needed from a crucial piece of communication was a refined, non-commercial feeling to tell the brand story."

Campaign's comments: We feel for smartphone makers and the agencies tasked with helping them. It's got to be tough to advertise a product that's familiar to everyone, fairly boring to talk about technology-wise and widely viewed as a disruptor of real human relationships.

The emotional approach worked well for Dtac in Thailand (which we just named as one of the year's best campaigns). It also appears to be working (again) for Thailand's AIS. And it works here, thanks to the small details in the film and the grade-A tagline: "Fatherhood takes two hands".

Compare this to a recent Samsung effort (covered by our India colleagues), where a father tries to spend some quality time with his daughter while also preparing a work presentation. We give Samsung some credit for trying to communicate actual phone features in an engaging way (and the girl's adorable), but in real life this would result in an unhappy daughter and an unhappy boss, and everyone knows it. Thus the unrealistic ad ends up being neither convincing nor appealing. 

CREDITS

Client: OPPO Science & Technology Company
Agency: BBDO Vietnam
Production House: Epic
Director: Keir McFarlane