Submitted by AKQA

Proximus Hide-and-Seek

Influencer Marketing

AKQA built Proximus a game teenagers could only win by staying offline, and the agency reports 1.3M interactions throughout social media including Snapchat, TikTok and Meta.

1.3Msocial media interactions
60%players that stayed offline
46%participants registered via influencers
+15%increased brand perception
40%youngsters engaged with social content

Case in 60 seconds

Proximus faced a market in which smartphones had become increasingly addictive and parents were losing a constant battle over teenage screen time, while schools across Belgium's Flanders region moved to enforce smartphone bans.

The campaign appears to turn on the observation that a hyper-connected generation responds to a dare rather than a lecture, because disconnection framed as a winnable game carries status that abstinence does not.

Outsmarting the screen, an online game that could only be won by going completely offline, with an incoming text message from Proximus set deliberately as the trap that ended a player's run.

AKQA developed the concept and campaign strategy, produced DOOH, online video and social content tuned to teenage visual style and language, and built the platform where teens registered, logged participation and submitted creative offline experiences. The agency also ran a national PR strategy and partnered with youth influencers and content creators to promote the challenge, with creative agency SILK and the Gezinsbond Association coordinated alongside Proximus.

AKQA reports 1.3M interactions throughout social media including Snapchat, TikTok and Meta, 60% of players staying offline, 46% of participants registering via influencers and a 15% increase in brand perception.

Strategy Breakdown

The primary strategy-learning section — interpretation, not a press-release summary.

Teenagers and young people in Belgium, described on the page as a hyper-connected generation of youngsters, with parents fighting a constant losing battle against their teenagers' screen time as the surrounding concern.
The page places the work inside a live argument about teenage phone use in which schools across Belgium's Flanders region were enforcing smartphone bans, so the campaign entered a debate parents and institutions were already conducting.
A telecom provider sells connectivity, so asking young people to disconnect risks contradicting its own commercial position, which the page resolves by attaching the work to the 'Smarter Online' vision rather than to a product claim.
Based on the available evidence, Proximus cast itself as the obstacle rather than the sponsor, because the trap that eliminated a player was a message from the brand, making the operator the thing to outsmart.
The reward structure suggests offline time was made legible and competitive, since players had to register, stay silent and then describe what they did, which turns a private absence into something a peer group can judge.

Creative & Execution System

Assets & channels

  • Snapchat
  • TikTok
  • Meta

Partners

  • AKQA (lead_agency), SILK (unspecified)

Participation mechanic

  • Teens signed up on a Proximus platform, went completely offline and tried to evade a trap set on purpose, an incoming text message from Proximus; once the digital silence broke, players logged their participation and submitted their offline experiences, with the most creative entries rewarded with theme park tickets, cinema passes and exclusive national team football match tickets.

Results & Evidence

MetricValueResult type
social media interactions1.3M Interactions throughout social media including Snapchat, TikTok and Metaengagements
players that stayed offline60% Players that stayed offline during the challengeperformance
participants registered via influencers46% Participants registered via our influencersperformance
increased brand perception15% Increased brand perceptionperformance
youngsters engaged with social content40% Youngsters that engaged with our social content introducing the challengeperformance
players claiming they reconnected50% Players claiming they reconnected with nature, family and friends, and became more productiveperformance

Why AKQA's strategy worked

  1. 1

    A restriction becomes participable when it is given a losing condition, because the trap message turned staying offline into a game state a player could forfeit rather than a rule a teenager was asked to obey.

  2. 2

    Creator partnerships can carry the registration load rather than only awareness, since AKQA reports 46% of participants registered via influencers, which places peer voices at the point of sign-up instead of at the top of the funnel.

  3. 3

    Building a submission step into the mechanic converts a behaviour campaign into a source of first-party accounts, which is what allowed the brand to report 50% of players claiming they reconnected with nature, family and friends.

  4. 4

    An advocacy partner supplies the permission a category cannot grant itself, because a telecom provider arguing for less connectivity reads as opportunistic until a family organisation such as Gezinsbond stands alongside it.

Related Case studies