How Orcon Used Film to Fight for Internet Freedom in New Zealand

Challenger Strategy Inside New Zealand's Concentrated Broadband Market

Orcon held a minority position in a market dominated by two operators. According to the Commerce Commission of New Zealand, the country had approximately 1.39 million retail fixed-line broadband connections as of 30 June 2014. Within that market, Spark — formerly Telecom NZ — commanded approximately 49 percent market share with an estimated 681,000 connections, per data reported by the Commerce Commission of New Zealand. Vodafone NZ held approximately 32 percent, with an estimated 445,000 connections, also per the Commerce Commission of New Zealand. Orcon's parent, CallPlus Group, accounted for approximately 13 percent of the market across its Slingshot, Flip, and Orcon brands combined, according to the Commerce Commission of New Zealand.

That structural reality shaped the campaign's logic entirely. A brand with roughly 13 percent of the market cannot win on scale, so Orcon chose to compete on values. The "Fighting for internet freedom" narrative framed broadband throttling — a practice that limits internet speeds after a data threshold is reached — as an injustice visited upon consumers by incumbents, implicitly positioning Spark and Vodafone NZ as the antagonists without naming them directly. This kind of values-based challenger positioning is a well-documented strategy for smaller ISPs competing against entrenched operators.

The timing reinforced the message. Orcon's earlier uncapped broadband campaign, running from October 2013 to March 2014 as reported by IT Brief New Zealand, had already primed the market to associate the brand with generous, restriction-free internet access. The October 2014 film deepened that association by giving it an ideological frame — not just uncapped data as a product feature, but internet freedom as a principle. In a New Zealand market where consumers were becoming increasingly aware of throttling practices, that escalation from product claim to belief system gave the campaign genuine strategic coherence.

The Craft Behind Contagion's Internet Freedom Film for Orcon

Alex Roberts directed "Fighting for internet freedom" for Orcon, with Finch serving as the production company. The film was produced by Nikki Smith at Finch, and the creative team at Contagion was led by Bridget Taylor as Executive Creative Director, with Verity Dookia serving as Creative Director. Daniel Walton held the Art Director role, Seth Josephs contributed as Copywriter, and Sacha Moore served as Agency Executive Producer, as documented across industry records including bestadsontv.com.

The campaign's creative architecture centres on narrative rather than demonstration. Where many telecommunications TVCs default to speed comparisons, price callouts, or lifestyle montages, "Fighting for internet freedom" adopts the vocabulary of a cause-film, borrowing visual and tonal grammar closer to advocacy advertising than product promotion. That choice is consistent with Contagion's broader creative philosophy in New Zealand, where the agency positioned itself as a home for work with genuine point of view.

The film format — a single asset released first on Facebook on October 13, 2014, as covered by StopPress — signals intentional creative economy. Rather than fragmenting the idea across multiple formats, the team committed the full weight of the campaign's argument to one sustained piece of storytelling. This approach places exceptional pressure on the script and direction to carry the audience through an emotional arc without the supporting architecture of an integrated campaign. Roberts's direction and Josephs's copy therefore bear the primary responsibility for whatever persuasive effect the film achieves.

No verifiable quotes from the creative team regarding their intent or process are publicly available for this campaign, limiting the degree to which the execution can be contextualised against its stated ambitions.

Measuring the Impact of Orcon's Internet Freedom TVC in New Zealand

No verified performance data for "Fighting for internet freedom" is publicly available in terms of reach, impressions, sales uplift, or media investment. The campaign received no documented recognition at Cannes Lions, the Effies, The One Show, D&AD, the Clios, the Webby Awards, or the WARC Awards, based on research across those bodies' public records.

Structural analysis provides the most honest available assessment. The campaign's positioning — a single-minded values narrative delivered through film, released on a social platform ahead of broadcast — was architecturally sound for a challenger brand operating in New Zealand's concentrated broadband market in 2014. The choice to frame product attributes as ideology, rather than presenting uncapped broadband as a mere feature, gave the brand a potentially durable competitive distinction against dominant operators Spark and Vodafone NZ.

What limits the campaign's ceiling, in structural terms, is the absence of a public-facing mechanic or participation element that might have amplified the "fighting" frame beyond passive viewership. For comparative context, Orcon's earlier "Orcon + Iggy Pop" campaign — created by Special Group and winner of the Direct Grand Prix at the 2010 Cannes Lions, as reported by the New Zealand Herald — demonstrated how the same brand could generate international recognition and measurable participation when the creative idea invited active consumer involvement. "Fighting for internet freedom" makes a compelling argument but does not give its audience a clear way to join the fight, which may account in part for its Clapboard Score of 59 out of 100.