Babbel / Social Campaign / Pitch Response

How do you convince a target audience of “self enhancers” and “ casual language dabblers” to take the plunge and subscribe to language aapp Babbel so that they can learn a language properly?

By providing alternative subtitles to the type of high-brow foreign TV and cinema that they’re already watching that are all about learning with Babbel instead. The gag being, that if you learned the language with Babbel then you’d know that’s not what they’re saying.

Our campaign proposal centered around Babbel being the language experts: “We know what we’re talking about”. With the messaging that, if you learn the language with Babbel, you’ll know what they’re talking about.

60” TVC

We repurposed different lengths of content clips for different mediums in different languages to show the flex of the idea.

This 60” TVC proposal was taken from hit German drama Deutschland ‘83. A tense scene about the threat of nuclear war repurposed to be about the anxiety of buying oranges abroad.

30” Social

This 30” social clip was taken from the award-winning German film The Lives Of Others. Again, a scene where a Stasi Officer listens in to a conversation was repurposed to be about how you learn with Babbel by listening to conversations.

15” Social

This 15” social clip was taken from the award-winning French movie Amelie. A scene where young Amelie’s mother home schooled her is repurposed to be about learning through conversations, and not word repetition, with Babbel.

Animated GIFs

We even took the snackable social content to the extent of creating GIFs using clips from foreign film and TV. These classic GIFs from The Good The Bad And The Ugly and Three Colours Blue were supplemented with subtitles about the anxieties caused by not learning a new language properly.

PR Stunt / Cinema Ad

As a PR stunt, we also proposed running a commercial before screenings of foreign movies that demonstrated how Babbel works using clips from classic foreign films. Instead of having subtitles, the clips used the dialogue boxes from the app. Showing both the foreign language written down and the English translation so that scenes acted as Babbel lessons. The point being that before long, with Babbel, you wouldn’t need anything.

Role: Lead Creative

Agency: Tommy

Creative Director: Iain Hunter