Telenor

The ad: Telenor's Halloween campaign, on the exact phone you came back for

Telenor is one of the biggest names in Nordic telecom. The Telenor Group traces its roots back to 1855 in Norway and today runs mobile networks across Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. In Denmark it is one of the country's largest mobile operators, and it owns one of the best-known characters in Danish advertising: Bedste, the wide-eyed granny who has fronted Telenor's campaigns since 2021.

This October, Telenor took its Halloween campaign all the way down to the product card. Bedste gets company from a glowing ghost, the background turns dark with a blue spotlight, and the whole phone range joins the spooky season. The Catalog Ad runs in Telenor's retargeting, so a shopper who looked at a Samsung Galaxy Xcover 7 EE meets that exact phone inside the Halloween scene, and a shopper who looked at an Apple iPhone 17 meets that one.

Nothing here is a default setting. Telenor decided which characters carry the campaign, how Bedste reacts to each phone, which logo confirms the phone at a glance, why one phone beats a carousel, which number the shopper sees first, and when the look should change.

Why it won Catalog Ad of the Week

A Halloween look is fun to scroll past. But the reason this ad earned the feature is what it did for Telenor's retargeting campaigns results.

A 74% jump in conversion rate is what happens when a returning shopper gets everything they need in one glance: the campaign they already know, the phone they already looked at, and the price they came back to check. These are shoppers who have made up their mind before they buy. That is how one seasonal campaign delivers a -22% cost per acquisition and +31% ROAS for Telenor.

What makes this Catalog Ad great

Run a single-image ad that shows the one phone they wanted, with the price up front

Telenor runs this Catalog Ad as a single-image ad, not a carousel. A carousel invites browsing: swipe, compare, keep looking. A single image shows one thing, and in Telenor's retargeting that one thing is the exact phone the shopper was interested in.

Now, picture yourself as the shopper. You looked at this phone earlier in the week and left it in your cart. Now it is back in your feed, and before you have taken in the picture you know the number. You do not have to click to find out whether it fits your budget. If it does, you are already convinced when you click.

This is anchoring at work. Tversky and Kahneman showed that the first number we see becomes the reference point for every number after it. Telenor chooses the cash price as that anchor and then shows the minimum total cost (the mindstepris) in the footnote, which builds trust.

Bring your mascot into the product card and give it a new expression for every phone

Most retargeting ads are a product on a white background. Telenor's is not. The glowing ghost and the wide-eyed granny with her phone turn every product card into a small scene, and the blue spotlight behind the phone makes the device the brightest object on the card. The eye travels from the price to the phone, across to the characters and finally to the sticker.

The granny is Bedste, Telenor's front figure since November 2021. A shopper who meets her inside a product card recognises Telenor before reading a single word, and the ghost joins her for the Halloween season.

Telenor's own analyses show that marketing with Bedste is remembered better and linked to Telenor more often. Her role also follows a clear rule: the closer a shopper gets to buying, the smaller she is. In this retargeting ad Telenor strikes that balance. She stands to the side as a familiar face while the price and the phone take the lead.

Look closer and Bedste is not the same on every card. Telenor uploaded several expressions of her as Product Assets in Confect and matched them to the phones, so she snaps a selfie on one card, waves on the next and points at the phone on another. That is the difference between a template with a new phone dropped in and a catalog where every card feels like its own little scene. A shopper who meets several Telenor ads over a few days keeps getting something new to look at, and each phone feels picked out for them rather than pulled from a feed. It is one of the smartest ways we have seen to keep Catalog Ads engaging and a bit more personal, without designing a single ad by hand.

Show the phone maker's logo so returning shoppers spot their phone instantly

Under every phone sits the logo of the brand that made it: the Apple logo under an iPhone, the SAMSUNG wordmark under a Galaxy. The logo comes straight from the product feed, so every card gets the right one without anyone placing it by hand.

You have been comparing phones for a week, and your thumb is moving fast. The SAMSUNG wordmark registers before the model name does, and that is enough: this is the phone you were looking at. Recognition happens before you have read anything else on the card.

In retargeting, shoppers are not discovering, they are recognizing. A familiar logo is processed faster than text, and processing fluency research shows that the easier something is to process, the more we trust it. The logo also closes a loop. The Zeigarnik effect says we remember unfinished tasks better than finished ones, and a phone that was looked at but not bought is exactly that.

Schedule a seasonal look so the ad stays fresh on its own

The Halloween look is not a manual swap. Telenor scheduled it for the spooky season across all four product groups, mobile cash price, mobile discount, tablets and accessories, and it replaces the summer set that ran earlier in the year. When Halloween ends, the ad returns to its everyday design without anyone touching it.

For a retargeting audience this matters twice. The shopper who is looking at phones in October meets a card that belongs to October, which makes the ad feel timely instead of generic. And a shopper who sees the same card repeatedly over a 90-day window gets something new to look at, which guards against ad wear-out: the drop in response that comes when people see the same creative too many times.

Key takeaways

Telenor's ad runs on one idea: meet a returning shopper with the answer they came back for, in a look they recognise.

👉 Lead with the price when the audience already knows the product

Telenor puts the price at the top and the full cost in the footnote. Do the same in retargeting: answer the price question before the click and keep the footnote honest.

👉 Bring your brand characters into the Catalog Ads

Bedste turns a product card into a Telenor campaign. Use the characters people already know, and give the call to action the one colour nothing else on the card uses.

👉 Show the product brand's logo in retargeting

The Apple and SAMSUNG logos let a returning shopper recognize their phone before reading a word. Pull the brand logo from your feed so every card confirms the product at a glance.

👉 Schedule seasonal looks instead of rebuilding them

Telenor's Halloween set runs through the spooky season and the everyday design returns by itself. A scheduled look keeps a retargeting ad timely and fresh.