WOM lends its own lawyers to rivals' customers trapped by retention clauses

Colombian carriers were using retention maneuvers to hold on to users who wanted out, and switching operators meant fighting contracts drafted to be fought. WOM, the market's challenger, needed a way to attack the practice without outspending incumbents.

A telco offers its own lawyers to rival carriers' customers — free — to fight the fine-print maneuvers that stop them from switching to WOM.

A 360 campaign under the line 'Take My Lawyers': customers of other operators got WOM's legal team on their side to untangle retention clauses and complete the switch, turning the company's own legal muscle — normally used to defend the operator — into a customer acquisition tool.

Beyond the customers switched, Revista PYM reports the campaign contributed to a modification of Colombia's portability law. At Cannes Lions 2024 it won a Bronze Lion in PR, Proximity BBDO's first Cannes Bronze, part of Colombia's 13-Lion haul that year.

In Colombia, leaving a mobile carrier has long meant escaping a contract designed to keep you: minimum-term clauses and retention maneuvers that operators deploy when a customer asks to port their number. WOM, the challenger operator that entered Colombia undercutting the market, built a campaign on that pain point with agencies BBDO Colombia and Proximity BBDO.

'Take My Lawyers' flipped the industry's defensive asset into an offensive one: WOM put its own legal team at the disposal of competitors' customers, free of charge, to fight the retention fine print standing between them and a switch. The lawyers became both the service and the message — no competitor could accuse the challenger of tricks without indicting the practice the campaign was exposing.

The work reached Cannes Lions 2024 as a Bronze Lion in PR (Culture & Context) — Proximity BBDO Colombia's first Cannes Bronze, in a year when Colombia took 13 Lions — and Revista PYM's account credits the campaign with helping push a modification of the portability law itself.

Every frustrated customer already knows the retention game; the campaign weaponized that shared grievance instead of explaining it.

Giving away legal help is a competitor's nightmare: rejecting it looks like having something to hide, accepting it means switching.

It repurposed an asset every telco already pays for — in-house lawyers — so the media story (a telco suing on the customer's behalf) cost little beyond nerve.

The idea aligned brand and product: WOM's promise was easy switching, and the campaign literally performed the switch.

The most credible gift a challenger can give is the exact expertise the industry uses against its customers. WOM's lawyers were simultaneously the service, the proof and the provocation.

The campaign won WOM a Bronze Lion in PR at Cannes 2024, recorded by Cannes' work library for WOM Mobile under 'Take My Lawyers', and was covered as one of the highlights of Colombia's 13-Lion year — notably as Proximity BBDO's first Bronze. According to Revista PYM, the campaign's pressure contributed to a modification of Colombia's portability law, extending its effect beyond marketing into the rules of the market itself.