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Hello Creative Folks,
Scam calls scale faster than your warnings do. Your customers get hit when they’re tired, distracted, or just trying to get through the day. In that moment, nobody wants a lecture about “staying vigilant.” So what actually works when the attacker has scripts, spoofed numbers, and infinite patience?
Most anti-scam campaigns try to change the victim. O2 flipped the target.
They treated scams like a business model, not a moral problem. If scammers make money by converting time into cash, then the most effective weapon isn’t a poster. It’s a time sink.
The Campaign:
Virgin Media O2 built Daisy, an AI “grandma” designed to answer scam calls and keep scammers talking for as long as possible. Daisy sounds warm, chatty, and just-confused-enough to feel real. She rambles, misunderstands, circles back, and nearly gives details… but never does. The scammer thinks they’re closing. Daisy is basically making tea and telling a story about her nephew’s dog.
It’s not just a prank. It’s a trap you can scale.
The Mechanism
This works because it uses the same psychology scammers use, but points it back at them.
1) Near-miss addiction
Scammers stay hooked because Daisy feels almost ready to comply. Near-misses keep humans engaged. Slots run on it. So do scams. Daisy becomes an infinite near-miss.
2) “Believable friction”
Most AI fails because it’s too smooth or too weird. Daisy succeeds because small delays and confusion read as “older person energy.” The imperfections aren’t bugs. They’re camouflage.
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3) Rewarded outrage
People avoid scam content because it’s stressful. Daisy makes it watchable. You get relief and a little revenge, which is a powerful sharing cocktail. It’s education disguised as entertainment.
The Pattern
This is a bigger shift you’ll see more of: brands moving from “awareness” to active defense.
Instead of telling people what to do, they build systems that reduce harm automatically. It’s the same logic behind spam filters and fraud detection. You don’t win by asking users to be smarter. You win by making the bad behavior less profitable.
The Framework
Call it the Time Tax Trap:
Bait: create a believable target scammers can’t resist
Burn: keep them in a loop of almost-progress
Broadcast: package the trap as culture so people learn without feeling preached to
Backstop: point viewers to real protections (reporting, call blocking, support)
The Application
O2 didn’t just release a funny film. They engineered a system that does two jobs at once:
It soaks up scammer capacity by keeping them busy
It teaches the public what scam patterns sound like, without a boring PSA tone
That’s the clever part. Daisy is both shield and story.
The Synthesis
Daisy worked because it respected attention. It didn’t ask people to care about fraud in the abstract. It gave them a small, satisfying experience where the villain loses in public. That’s how you get reach and trust.
P.S.
If your category has a real “bad actor” problem, stop defaulting to warnings. Ask one sharper question:
What resource does the villain need to win, and how do we make that resource expensive?
O2 picked time. That choice made the whole thing click.
Figment is written by Abbhinav Kastura, a writer/producer who has spent a decade making impactful internet videos and Guru Nicketan, an advertising nerd, B2B Marketer, stand-up comedian, and a film buff.
