Submitted by Oust

AT&T Ponder This 9x16 Sitcom Series

Influencer Marketing

Oust produced Ponder This, a 9x16 sitcom that ran for 12 weeks for AT&T and a nostalgic Millennial audience, and reports 6M impressions on influencer content.

1.5MViews
65KEngagements
6MImpressions

Case in 60 seconds

AT&T entered the new year with a strategic re-focus on its legacy telecom offerings and wanted to reintroduce itself to its social audience, which meant building a connection without leaning on the hard sell.

The campaign turns on shared memory rather than product claims, because Oust read the ways AT&T had changed over the years as a nostalgic story that a Millennial audience raised on ABC's TGIF block would recognise as its own.

Oust built Ponder This as what it calls the first-ever 9x16 sitcom, blending ABC's TGIF block, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and a splash of Lizzie McGuire, so AT&T arrived as entertainment rather than advertising.

Shot on a 3-wall set with space for a live audience, Ponder This ran for 12 weeks across 13 episodes and an after school special-style PSA about the Digital Divide. More than 30 content pieces around it asked users to decode T9 text message strings and request songs from personalized mixtapes, and drove them to full-length videos on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.

Oust reports 1.5M views, 65k engagements and 6M impressions on influencer content, which are the only results the page prints, so the record carries no business or sentiment measure for AT&T.

Strategy Breakdown

A nostalgic Millennial audience, within the wider social audience AT&T wanted to reconnect with as it refocused on its legacy telecom offerings.
A strategic re-focus on legacy telecom offerings gave AT&T something to reintroduce, while its wish to avoid the hard sell ruled out a direct product push to its social audience.
The page casts AT&T as the host of a nostalgic sitcom and, through the after school special-style PSA, as a company dedicated to tackling the Digital Divide rather than as a seller of telecom plans.
Oust aimed the series at a nostalgic Millennial audience, so the references to ABC's TGIF block, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, T9 texting and mixtapes did the work of connection that a sales message could not.

Creative & Execution System

Assets & channels

  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • TikTok

Partners

  • Oust

Participation mechanic

  • Content around the series asked users to decode T9 text message strings and to request songs from their favorite personalized mixtapes, and it drove them to the full-length videos on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.

Results & Evidence

MetricValue
Views1.5M views
Engagements65K engagements
Impressions6M impressions

Why Oust's strategy worked

  1. 1

    Nostalgia gives a legacy brand a way to reintroduce itself without the hard sell, because a format the audience grew up with carries recognition that a product message would otherwise have to earn.

  2. 2

    A serialised format running for 12 weeks gives a social audience a reason to return, so interactive posts such as T9 decoding and mixtape requests hold attention between episodes rather than at launch alone.

  3. 3

    Folding a cause into the entertainment, as the PSA about the Digital Divide did, lets a brand state its social commitment inside a format the audience already chose to watch rather than in a separate appeal.

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