Orange Makes Scam Calls Sound Like Irritating Music to Your Ears

'Scamcophony' trumpets the telco's cybersecurity offering

Scams, phishing expeditions, fraudulent notifications about parcels that don’t exist. Each contributes a discordant note to the tech-driven symphony of daily life.

French telco Orange coins the term “Scamcophony” to describe such irritations and weaves assorted beeps, bloops, buzzes and fuzz-tones into an avant-garde musical number to tout its Cybersecure protection service.

You can’t dance to it. Maybe just hang up and walk away.

The composition’s dissonant and disruptive, and of course that’s the point. Each note echoes the sick spirit of scammers, with synth-beats pounding into your frontal lobes like some mad Moby track best forgotten. (Or worse, free jazz crossed with electronica. Yikes!) That said, intrigue builds as the ad unfolds, and most viewers should hang around for the big reveal.

The effort from Publicis Conseil represents “an original way of staging what millions of French people experience today, and a reminder that beyond technical protection, cybersecurity is also a matter of peace of mind,” per campaign materials. “Orange chose to approach the subject from a resolutely positive angle: celebrating not the threat itself, but the relief felt once it disappears.”

Indeed, the sonic palette grows more annoying frame by frame. Sweet silence comes at the end, as the brand’s logo flashes on screen. It’s an unusual take, sans dialogue, that feels compelling because we’ve all been there, cursing the caller, wishing the hoaxes would stop.

Bradley Bell and Pablo Jones-Soler directed through production house Wanda. The initiative will run through month’s end on TV and VOD with social elements from Razorfish.

Related: Data Trackers Are Too Darn Clingy in Apple’s Privacy Spot