A thought leadership campaign that turned “friction” into the business buzzword of the year

Zero Friction Future, Facebook

The Challenge

The cost of friction in digital marketing for businesses in APAC can be up to US$300 billion or more every year. But the concept of friction was hard to explain, and even harder to make stick. How could we explain this to businesses in the simplest, most human and memorable way?

The Idea: The Future is Now

A simple word every marketer has used countless times in their ads: Now.

Buy now. Shop now. Book now. Now is maybe the most over-used word in the modern marketing playbook. But, for the most part, that’s all it is. A word that could just as easily mean 10 taps, as it could 2. Most businesses are promising now, but not delivering. That’s friction.

Today’s customers want now to mean now. And the businesses who remove that friction, and truly deliver on the promise of now, are the ones destined to succeed.

Campaign Identity

Inspired by the shape of the number ‘0’, we worked with a design agency to create a seamless, mobius-strip style icon that became the centrepiece of the campaign identity. This shape was then used as a graphic element across various parts of the campaign

The Speed of Now

To take the idea from conceptual to concrete, we created a unique content series that featured interviews with CEOs of some of APAC’s biggest businesses, innovating at the speed of now. The twist? Each interview was conducted in the time taken to complete a transaction with the business.

An interview with the CEO of ING bank, conducted in the time taken to open a bank account online. An interview with the CEO of Tesco Lotus in the time taken to check out groceries. An interview with the CEO of Gojek in the time taken for a ride to arrive. These weren’t just ordinary pieces of thought leadership. They were proof of it.

Watch the ING Bank film >>

Watch the Tesco Lotus film >>

The Economist Partnership

To bolster our credentials as thought leaders in the space, and reach our primary C-suite target audience, we partnered with the Economist to create a content hub on their website. The content hub contained all the video interviews, along with the Zero Friction Future report. We also ran advertorials and a full page print ad in the print edition of their magazine.

Rest of the Campaign

The rest of the integrated campaign included:

A dedicated campaign microsite
Custom designed Zero Friction Future solutions guide and white paper
Events across all key APAC markets
Tactical ads to drive downloads of the white paper

Media Coverage

The result? The concept stuck, and “friction” became the business buzzword of the year in APAC, with multiple pieces of print and TV media coverage across major markets like India, Korea, and Australia. Clients in some of these markets even started using the idea of Zero Friction Future and “Now means now” in their own stage presentations.