In a market saturated with mobile communications advertising, Tele2 needed to break through advertising clutter to improve perceptions and persuade customers to choose Tele2.

The solution was an explosive brand relaunch. The relaunch, which was built to appeal to Latvia’s love of rumour, revelation and debate, was designed to promote an innovative new tariff.

A fake meteorite crash was staged in the backwoods of Latvia. Evidence of a possible meteorite crash was confirmed in a firefighter’s official report. A video of the crash was seeded in social media and quickly made the breaking news on mainstream media.

Our “space visitor” blew the dismal state of Latvia’s economy off the front pages for almost a week. The day following the crash, experts arrived to discover that the crater was actually man-made. This led to speculation on who initiated this audacious stunt.

On the same day, Tele2 owned up to the stunt by announcing that the meteorite landing was staged to move attention away from the economic recession to prove that there is more to life than the crisis.

Two weeks later a new flat rate tariff called “Meteorite” was launched.