Teens holding phones stand beside a giant stone sculpture reading "HOW LONG CAN YOU STAY OFFLINE?" in a courtyard
Submitted by AKQA

Hide-and-Seek

Influencer Marketing

AKQA built a game for Proximus that Belgian teenagers could only win by staying offline, and the agency reports 1.3M interactions across Snapchat, TikTok and Meta.

1.3MInteractions throughout social media
60%Players that stayed offline
46%Participants registered via influencers
+15%Increased brand perception

Case in 60 seconds

Smartphones have become increasingly addictive and parents are losing a constant battle against teenage screen time, while schools across Belgium's Flanders region enforce smartphone bans, so the line between healthy use and obsession had broken.

The campaign appears to turn on the reading that teenagers respond to a dare rather than a restriction, because a ban arrives from adults while a game arrives from peers and carries a prize.

Outsmarting the screen: an online game that could be won only by going completely offline, with an incoming text message from Proximus set as a deliberate trap that players had to evade.

Youth influencers promoted the challenge across social, DOOH and online video carried it, and teens registered on a platform AKQA built, logging participation and submitting the offline stories that won prizes.

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

Strategy Breakdown

Teenagers and young people in Belgium whose screen time their parents and schools were trying to limit, described on the page as a hyper-connected generation.
Based on the available evidence, the work sits inside a fight over teenage screen time that had already left the home, because schools across Belgium's Flanders region were enforcing bans while parents kept losing the same argument privately.
A telecom operator sells connection, so asking its youngest users to disconnect risks reading as a brand arguing against its own product, which the page answers by framing disconnection as a different form of connection rather than a loss.
Proximus appears to cast itself as the referee of healthy digital habits rather than the seller of data, carrying the 'Smarter Online' vision through a partnership with the family advocacy organisation Gezinsbond and a national PR strategy.
The trap reads as the load-bearing part, because a single incoming text message from Proximus converts an invisible private behaviour into a pass or fail event that the campaign can track and the player can feel.

Creative & Execution System

Assets & channels

  • TikTok
  • Snapchat
  • Other

Partners

  • AKQA
  • SILK

Participation mechanic

  • Teens signed up on the Proximus platform, went completely offline, evaded a text message sent as a trap, logged their participation and submitted creative accounts of what they did instead.

Results & Evidence

MetricValue
Interactions Throughout Social Media1.3M Interactions throughout social media including Snapchat, TikTok and Meta
Players That Stayed Offline60% Players that stayed offline during the challenge
Participants Registered Via Influencers46% Participants registered via our influencers
Increased Brand Perception15% Increased brand perception
Youngsters Engaging With Social Content40% Youngsters that engaged with our social content introducing the challenge
Players Claiming They Reconnected50% Players claiming they reconnected with nature, family and friends, and became more productive

Why AKQA's strategy worked

  1. 1

    A telecom brand can argue for less screen time without arguing against itself, because Proximus attached the message to a game it ran rather than to a restriction imposed by schools or parents.

  2. 2

    Influencer partners appear to work hardest at the registration step rather than the awareness step, since AKQA reports 46% of participants registering via influencers while 40% of youngsters engaged with the social content.

  3. 3

    Asking participants to document an absence gives a campaign evidence it could otherwise not collect, which is how the work produced self-reported claims such as 50% of players reconnecting with nature, family and friends.

Related Case studies