The Campaign

Among young people, 80.3% responded that “I use my mobile phone instead of an alarm clock to wake up.” For “The person who best knows how to wake me up,” the most common response was their mother at 77.8%. Likewise, for “The person I can count on most when I can’t afford to oversleep the next day,” the most common response was their mother at 73.3%. It was based on this data (survey by au) that au mobile opened a call center of mothers and started providing a wake-up call service for young people.

Creative Execution

The young users can choose the mother to wake them up from a roster of idiosyncratic mothers. They can be chosen based on their birthplace and dialect, and come with a snooze function to make sure the wake up is successful. The service has been reported in newspapers, on TV, on the radio, and numerous other media outlets as well as was shared on social media. Typically, no more than 3% of the comments were negative (survey by au).

Results

Most meaningful for au as a mobile phone company was that people could rediscover the kindness of a person waking up someone else, the warmth of a person waking up to someone else’s voice, and the value of real communication. Among the young people, there were those who rediscovered the power of communication, for example by renewing their gratitude toward others or calling their real mothers for the first time in a while. Many of the mothers also came to empathize with their “sons and daughters.”

By having people once again experience the kindness and warmth of communication by human voice, and not just virtual communication, we successfully helped people rediscover the power of this form of communication. Among the young people who experienced this service, there were those who saw changes in how they felt and acted, for example by renewing their gratitude toward others or calling their real mothers for the first time in a while.

The mothers were chosen from ordinary women with actual parenting experience. As professionals in waking up their sons and daughters, they had sophisticated communication skills that apply to all wake-up styles as well as a caring heart and a sense of humor. To make mobile phone calls a service in themselves and through that improve our brand image is also the aspiration of au as a mobile phone company.