O2 wasted scammers' time with an AI grandmother who never paid

O2 faced a category problem with brand damage: scammers impersonated mobile networks, and The One Show case says O2 was impersonated more than any other large UK mobile network. A normal warning campaign would still leave customers doing the work.

Daisy changed the target. VCCP trained an AI scambaiter on hundreds of hours of real scam calls with YouTuber Jim Browning, gave it a believable backstory and voice, then seeded its number into scam call-centre databases.

The One Show says Daisy wasted more than 1,000 real scammers' time, with calls up to 50 minutes. VCCP reports 1.7 billion impressions and GBP36 million in earned media since launch.

Waste the scammer's scarce resource

The elderly persona made response delays feel natural, turning a technical limitation into camouflage.

Number seeding put the trap inside scammers' own acquisition funnel.

The public film turned an anti-fraud utility into entertainment people wanted to share.

When bad actors profit from throughput, a defensive tool can win by slowing them down instead of confronting them head-on.

Daisy won major 2025 awards, including Shorty Grand Prix prizes in AI, generative AI and technology, and was highlighted by Cannes Lions Europe coverage. The campaign also lifted awareness of the UK's 7726 scam-reporting number from 18% to 26% in The One Show results.