On the 6th edition of the Meios & Publicidade Awards, Meo received the ‘Best Branding’ 2007 award. The Lisbon Congress Centre was the venue chosen for the award ceremony that happened on 29 May, and started at 9 PM. It should be remembered that Meo’s campaign had already been awarded two Bronze prizes at the Sinos Awards in the TV/Cinema category and a special prize for Best Casting.

This prize represents the recognition of PT’s bet on the implementation of a differentiating and innovative communication strategy, using both traditional and revolutionary media.

In April 2008, PT presented its massification strategy for the television of the future. Combining innovation with creativity and humour, PT chose the Gatos Fedorento comedians to give life to its campaign and to incarnate the role of commanders of the future. This was the first campaign of the humoristic quartet for a PT product – other than the telephone service. The campaign’s communication strategy took a bet on traditional media such as television, radio, press, cinema and urban billboards as well as on less conventional media, namely on-line viral marketing and mobile.

In a revolutionary initiative, the Meo commanders invaded the three generalist channels of the Portuguese television simultaneously – an action never seen before in Portugal – and issued a communiqué to the country: The command is Meo”. In a few weeks’ time, this advertising campaign, in which Gatos Fedorento are the protagonists, attained over 40% of proven recall.

May was marked by the launch of Meo Satellite, taking the television of the future to every single place in the country. Gato Fedorento were once again the face of the campaign. “We already dominate all the Portuguese space, meo” was one of the many expressions, which became popular throughout the country, advertising PT’s television service.

Following the most recent trends in online communication and taking advantage of the viral effect on the Internet, PT has launched the microsite http://jatens.meo.pt/. Via this online space, the meo commanders have set a challenge to the Portuguese: “Take the command now! Find out whether your home place has MEO Satellite available”. In an interactive and personalized way, the Gatos Fedorento initiate a telephone call to the user, which this receives in his telephone. When he picks up the telephone, Ricardo Araújo Pereira informs the user about service availability in his area of residence, in real time with the image that he is seeing on the site.

Apart from informing whether the location sought by the user has Meo available, this site also has the campaign’s television spots available for viewing and has revealed Laika, the female dog, protagonist in one of the television advertisements that would later be put up for auction on the Sapo portal, resulting in a sum delivered entirely to Associação Nariz Vermelho (Red Nose Association).

In six days only, the mini site http://jatens.meo.pt/ has reached more than a million views and, in 15 days, it had attained two million and a half views, continuing to beat records in this kind of initiative. It should be enhanced that this viral action reached around 10,000 participations per hour, the site having been visited by surfers from more than 100 countries on the five continents.