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Category
Innovation / Execution in Technology
Annual ID
OS25_CT041M
Background
7 in 10 Brits were targeted by scammers last year, collectively losing millions. We’ve all either been scammed, or know someone who’s been scammed. Being scammed leaves people feeling violated, humiliated and angry – and often, the victims of this type of fraud are the most vulnerable in society: our grandparents.
These scammers impersonate banks, tax collectors, even mobile phone networks…
In fact, they impersonated one of the UK’s largest mobile networks; O2 more than any other.
And that’s not just a problem for O2 customers, it’s a crisis for the brand’s reputation.
We needed to do something to fight back…
But scammers don’t fight fair. They’re often in other countries, with other laws, hiding behind anonymity and untraceable call centres.
We couldn’t hunt them down, so we did the next best thing, we set a trap.
These scammers impersonate banks, tax collectors, even mobile phone networks…
In fact, they impersonated one of the UK’s largest mobile networks; O2 more than any other.
And that’s not just a problem for O2 customers, it’s a crisis for the brand’s reputation.
We needed to do something to fight back…
But scammers don’t fight fair. They’re often in other countries, with other laws, hiding behind anonymity and untraceable call centres.
We couldn’t hunt them down, so we did the next best thing, we set a trap.
Creative Idea
The best way to tackle a scammer is to find them and arrest them. But many operate from anonymous locations, with a complex network of burner phones. They’re unreachable and untraceable–and we’re a British telco, not the police.
We needed to attack them in the next best way: wasting as much of their time as humanly possible. Finding and deploying someone–or something–with all the time in the world.
Meet Daisy.
Daisy is a sweet, chatty, 78 year old granny who loves to talk on the phone, and she’s a scammer's worst nightmare. Because Daisy doesn’t actually exist. She’s a state of the art AI, created by O2 to waste scammers’ time.
Daisy knows that time is money to a scammer, and that’s how she hurts them. Keeping them on the phone with rambling anecdotes and meaningless small talk, but always making it feel like she’s just about to give away her bank details or password.
We needed to attack them in the next best way: wasting as much of their time as humanly possible. Finding and deploying someone–or something–with all the time in the world.
Meet Daisy.
Daisy is a sweet, chatty, 78 year old granny who loves to talk on the phone, and she’s a scammer's worst nightmare. Because Daisy doesn’t actually exist. She’s a state of the art AI, created by O2 to waste scammers’ time.
Daisy knows that time is money to a scammer, and that’s how she hurts them. Keeping them on the phone with rambling anecdotes and meaningless small talk, but always making it feel like she’s just about to give away her bank details or password.
Insights & Strategy
We wanted to show that rather than perpetuating the problem of scamming, O2 was taking a stand against it.
1. DRIVE MASS REACH
→ Make as many people aware of the threat of scamming as possible via a disruptive, innovative approach that would cut through the anti-fraud noise.
2. IMPROVE O2’S REPUTATION
→ Improve O2’s reputation for fraud protection among its customers and demonstrate a commitment to righting category wrongs.
3. DRIVE POSITIVE SENTIMENT
→ Reclaim the narrative with a positive anti-fraud story.
4. INCREASE AWARENESS OF 7726
→ Give people a way to fight back by increasing awareness and usage of ‘7726’ (a number used to report scam numbers).
5. FIGHT BACK
→ Remove the onus from customers by tackling the problem at source.
We needed an innovative technological solution that could help O2 scam the scammers.
Why AI?
The groundbreaking technology behind Daisy can move at pace and scale, without the need for human intervention.
Many people have fallen victim to sophisticated AI voice doubling tactics whereby scammers replicate how a target talks before calling friends and family, asking them to send money urgently.
Daisy uses the scammers’ weapon against them and fights back with a more sophisticated AI solution; one which doesn’t need to eat, sleep or rest.
1. DRIVE MASS REACH
→ Make as many people aware of the threat of scamming as possible via a disruptive, innovative approach that would cut through the anti-fraud noise.
2. IMPROVE O2’S REPUTATION
→ Improve O2’s reputation for fraud protection among its customers and demonstrate a commitment to righting category wrongs.
3. DRIVE POSITIVE SENTIMENT
→ Reclaim the narrative with a positive anti-fraud story.
4. INCREASE AWARENESS OF 7726
→ Give people a way to fight back by increasing awareness and usage of ‘7726’ (a number used to report scam numbers).
5. FIGHT BACK
→ Remove the onus from customers by tackling the problem at source.
We needed an innovative technological solution that could help O2 scam the scammers.
Why AI?
The groundbreaking technology behind Daisy can move at pace and scale, without the need for human intervention.
Many people have fallen victim to sophisticated AI voice doubling tactics whereby scammers replicate how a target talks before calling friends and family, asking them to send money urgently.
Daisy uses the scammers’ weapon against them and fights back with a more sophisticated AI solution; one which doesn’t need to eat, sleep or rest.
Execution
First, we had to create Daisy…
We designed her personality and backstory to make her feel real and to make her irresistible bait to scammers. We partnered with scambaiter/YouTuber Jim Browning to train her on hundreds of hours of real scam calls. Then, we made her sound and feel authentic by giving her the voice of our colleague’s real-life granny. (Thanks, June.)
Giving Daisy the character of an elderly person had two key benefits. It allowed for tiny delays in the AI’s real-time response to seem like she was thinking between sentences. Effectively camouflaging the tech. Secondly, it used the scammer's worst instincts against them. Because they assumed Daisy was vulnerable and more likely to fall for the scam, they stayed on the phone longer and fell headlong into the trap.
And finally, the tricky bit. How to make sure scammers had Daisy’s number… For this we used number seeding and breadcrumbing to secretly infiltrate scam call centre databases and make sure Daisy’s number came up on call lists. Then all she had to do was wait for the phone to ring.
Daisy launched in two stages. First in complete secrecy, allowing her to take calls and waste scammers time while we generated content from the interactions.
Then the public launch. Turning Daisy into a hero for anyone who hated scammers and letting the world know what O2 had done to fight back. We achieved this with an online film of Daisy in action and used ex-Love Island celebrity Amy Hart (a scam victim) as the human spokesperson. The core film was supported with social edits of Daisy’s calls, emulating popular ‘scambaiting’ content; making our campaign of revenge into funny, shareable entertainment.
Daisy launched on O2 and Amy Hart’s owned channels, and was pitched to British publications.
We designed her personality and backstory to make her feel real and to make her irresistible bait to scammers. We partnered with scambaiter/YouTuber Jim Browning to train her on hundreds of hours of real scam calls. Then, we made her sound and feel authentic by giving her the voice of our colleague’s real-life granny. (Thanks, June.)
Giving Daisy the character of an elderly person had two key benefits. It allowed for tiny delays in the AI’s real-time response to seem like she was thinking between sentences. Effectively camouflaging the tech. Secondly, it used the scammer's worst instincts against them. Because they assumed Daisy was vulnerable and more likely to fall for the scam, they stayed on the phone longer and fell headlong into the trap.
And finally, the tricky bit. How to make sure scammers had Daisy’s number… For this we used number seeding and breadcrumbing to secretly infiltrate scam call centre databases and make sure Daisy’s number came up on call lists. Then all she had to do was wait for the phone to ring.
Daisy launched in two stages. First in complete secrecy, allowing her to take calls and waste scammers time while we generated content from the interactions.
Then the public launch. Turning Daisy into a hero for anyone who hated scammers and letting the world know what O2 had done to fight back. We achieved this with an online film of Daisy in action and used ex-Love Island celebrity Amy Hart (a scam victim) as the human spokesperson. The core film was supported with social edits of Daisy’s calls, emulating popular ‘scambaiting’ content; making our campaign of revenge into funny, shareable entertainment.
Daisy launched on O2 and Amy Hart’s owned channels, and was pitched to British publications.
Results
The campaign received unprecedented coverage for any O2 campaign.
1. DRIVE MASS REACH
The campaign achieved 17% unprompted recall – O2’s best proactive news story of 2024.
Daisy received 1800+ pieces of coverage globally, with dedicated TV coverage in 9 markets. She garnered 1.7 billion+ earned impressions (and counting).
She was covered by everyone from Jeremy Vine to Whoopi Goldberg, from The Hindustan Times to the New York Times, from Good Morning Britain to Sky News. By famous YouTubers, AI magazines and technology specialists. She even made it onto ‘Have I Got News For You’.
This equates to a total Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE) of £36m, from just £20k media spend.
2. IMPROVE O2’S REPUTATION FOR TACKLING FRAUD
The campaign had broader positive impacts on perceptions.
Satisfaction with O2's efforts to tackle fraud has increased substantially since early April, rising 10 percentage points from 24% to 34% (+42%).
This improvement outpaces competitors: EE and Tesco Mobile each only saw 3ppt increases in the same period. There have been no other ‘anti-fraud’ campaigns in this time.
3. DRIVE POSITIVE SENTIMENT
Daisy drove the most significant positive sentiment of 2024, with a +6.7% uplift in favourability among those who recalled her.
Analysis suggests that media coverage is 100% positive – an extraordinary feat given the scaremongering in the current AI news rhetoric.
4. INCREASE AWARENESS OF ‘7726’
Awareness of the 7726 number has risen significantly since April, from 18% to 26% (+44%). (There have been no other major campaigns or news moments during this period, from either O2 or its competitors.)
We saw an 8% month-on-month uplift in reports to 7726 during the campaign.
5. FIGHT BACK
To date, Daisy has wasted over 1000 real scammers’ time on calls lasting up to 50 minutes: testament to Daisy’s authenticity.
1. DRIVE MASS REACH
The campaign achieved 17% unprompted recall – O2’s best proactive news story of 2024.
Daisy received 1800+ pieces of coverage globally, with dedicated TV coverage in 9 markets. She garnered 1.7 billion+ earned impressions (and counting).
She was covered by everyone from Jeremy Vine to Whoopi Goldberg, from The Hindustan Times to the New York Times, from Good Morning Britain to Sky News. By famous YouTubers, AI magazines and technology specialists. She even made it onto ‘Have I Got News For You’.
This equates to a total Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE) of £36m, from just £20k media spend.
2. IMPROVE O2’S REPUTATION FOR TACKLING FRAUD
The campaign had broader positive impacts on perceptions.
Satisfaction with O2's efforts to tackle fraud has increased substantially since early April, rising 10 percentage points from 24% to 34% (+42%).
This improvement outpaces competitors: EE and Tesco Mobile each only saw 3ppt increases in the same period. There have been no other ‘anti-fraud’ campaigns in this time.
3. DRIVE POSITIVE SENTIMENT
Daisy drove the most significant positive sentiment of 2024, with a +6.7% uplift in favourability among those who recalled her.
Analysis suggests that media coverage is 100% positive – an extraordinary feat given the scaremongering in the current AI news rhetoric.
4. INCREASE AWARENESS OF ‘7726’
Awareness of the 7726 number has risen significantly since April, from 18% to 26% (+44%). (There have been no other major campaigns or news moments during this period, from either O2 or its competitors.)
We saw an 8% month-on-month uplift in reports to 7726 during the campaign.
5. FIGHT BACK
To date, Daisy has wasted over 1000 real scammers’ time on calls lasting up to 50 minutes: testament to Daisy’s authenticity.
2025 Awards
Total Points: 3
Merit
Credits
Agency
VCCP / London
Digital Agency
faith / London
Production Company
Girl&Bear
Chief Creative Officer
Chris Birch
Jonny Parker
Chief Strategy Officer
Michael Lee
Creative Director
Ben Hopkins
Morten Legarth
Design Director
Tom Loach
Designer
Matt Montgomery-Taylor
Leila Amin
Editor
David Fayinka
Tom James
Deputy Executive Creative Director
David Masterman
Executive Producer
Charlotte Borrell
Account Coordinator
Samuel Olabodee
Artlab Manager
James Perry
Audio Operator
Emily Vizard
Business Director
Helena Chaplin
CEO
Michael Sugden
Influencer Marketing Manager
Ismahane Ileye
Innovation Lead
Peter Gasston
Integrated Creative Producer
Pip Seymour-Judd
Junior Planner
Liberty Covill
JUNIOR RESOURCE MANAGER
Yasmine Moridi
Managing Partner
Kerry Howell
Managing Partner and Head of faith
Alex Dalman
Planning director
Lotte Jones
Production Assistant
Felix Borer
Project director
Ravi Patel
Prompt & Diffusion Model Engineer
Gabriele Lanzafame
Senior Account Director
Jonathan Andrews
Senior Account Manager
Jamie Glazier
Senior Creative
James Lucking-Pham
Filipe Birck
Senior Interactive Developer
Mike Beckman
Senior Post Producer
Sarah Hemsley
Technical Director
Phil Beaman
Technical Lead
Phil Beaman
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