Establishing a brand world, nourishing a 10-year relationship

TIMELESS BACKGROUND: 
When ARGONAUT began working with Cricket Wireless in 2014, Cricket was a small prepaid player recently acquired by AT&T. Bucking category norms and wrapping lower-funnel deals and offers in something distinct—our friendly, memorable characters—we helped Cricket grow its subscriber base 113% from 2015 to 2019, seeing 18 quarters of consecutive growth.


TIMELY CONTEXT: 
By 2020, shifts in the wireless landscape, as well as audience and budget, required a revised approach. The category began to flatten as the larger postpaid brands continued to acquire and attach themselves to prepaid brands. Meanwhile, we began to see our “Cricket Core” audience move away from linear TV, spending more time on mobile devices and engaging with social platforms. Simultaneously, Cricket’s media spend was cut, and we knew a pivot in our approach was needed to make more valuable creative.


ICONIC BRAND: 
The iconic “Smile. You’re on Cricket” platform remains the same. But over the last five years, national TV spend has halved while social video has seen a 5x increase and other social investments have nearly doubled. We’ve seen the addition of platforms like TikTok and Pinterest to the plan, which brought with them a social-first mentality. Linear TV remains important, but our ability to adapt to each platform based on behaviors, formats, and best practices along with our increased reliance on our in-house production studio, Avalon Productions, has allowed us to manage an increase in deliverables with greater efficiency and effectiveness than ever before.