We had a standing assignment from Comcast to win subscribers away from AT&T.
We knew we couldn't simply promote functional advantages like faster speeds or better coverage. We needed a more emotional truth, and a more arresting creative terrain. We found it by mining copy-testing verbatims alongside social media complaints.
Customers who chose AT&T over Xfinity actually didn't care about having the "best" service. They were looking for value, and trying to skip the bells and whistles. But, they ended up getting what they were paying for: intermittent service and a slow accumulation of disappointments.
That gap between expectations and reality gave us our strategic terrain. Listing Xfinity's superior speed and features couldn't move a price-sensitive customer, because their choice was already rationalized. But, regret could. The work didn't need to argue Xfinity was better on a spec sheet; it needed to name the frustration AT&T customers truly felt. That strategic reframing gave our creative team a clear and fertile emotional space, and it gave a risk-averse client something rigorous to defend internally.
It all came together as "Stop Living with AT&T," a campaign that cast the provider as the roommate from hell — the one who drinks from the carton, always lets you down, and never delivers on their promises. The metaphor was more provocative than what this client normally would have approved, but it survived because it was razor sharp. The work shipped at scale, ran long, and pushed AT&T's subscribers to Comcast.