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NOS launched "The Magic Box" in December 2018 as a Christmas film campaign produced in Portugal, created by Havas and directed by Marco Martins through Ministério dos Filmes, telling the story of a young boy and a small mouse whose unlikely friendship is resolved through the emotional power of connected technology, according to Tcm.
The campaign entered the Portuguese market at a moment when telecommunications advertisers were competing intensely for emotional real estate during the holiday season. NOS, a brand born in 2014 from the merger of ZON Multimédia and Optimus and operating as part of NOS, SGPS, S, according to Publicacoes Ciac Pt.A., framed its technology offering not as a product category but as a conduit for human connection. The film medium was chosen deliberately, allowing the brand to bypass rational product messaging in favour of narrative warmth. The single media asset that constitutes the campaign is a testament to the creative confidence of Havas Portugal, concentrating the entire communications effort into one cohesive filmic statement rather than dispersing it across multiple executions, according to Adsoftheworld.
In Portugal, the Christmas advertising window has historically been one of the most contested periods for telecommunications operators, and "The Magic Box" was timed precisely to that pressure point, with its launch recorded on November 28, 2018, according to coverage published by Imagens de Marca. The campaign was subsequently listed on Ads of the World in the film category under the electronics and technology sector, extending its visibility beyond the Portuguese domestic audience to an international creative community. The Clapboard Ad Archive classifies the campaign under the designation "Exemplary Story," assigning it a Clapboard Score of 54 out of 100, reflecting its narrative coherence against the competitive benchmark of global Christmas advertising.
NOS operated in a telecommunications landscape defined by intense four-way competition. In Portugal, the bundled-services market in 2018 comprised four major operator groups — MEO, NOS, Vodafone, and Cabolink/ONI-NOWO — alongside 51 active operators in total, according to ANACOM. Bundled-services revenue reached approximately €1.582 billion in 2018, per ANACOM, and mobile penetration stood at 170.5% at the close of that year, reflecting widespread multiple-SIM ownership and business line adoption across the population.
MEO held 40.6% of bundled-service subscriber share and 41.8% of revenue share at end-2018, according to ANACOM, making it the clear market leader. NOS held 37.4% of bundled-service subscriber share at the same point, per ANACOM, positioning it as the principal challenger and underscoring the commercial logic of a brand-differentiation strategy that reached beyond price and product specification. In a market where infrastructure parity between the two leading operators was approaching, emotional resonance became a genuine competitive lever. Vodafone represented a third front of pressure, particularly in mobile, while the remaining smaller operators competed primarily on price.
Against this backdrop, the strategic intelligence behind "The Magic Box" is clear. Havas Portugal identified a consumer truth well-established within Portuguese telecommunications advertising: that loneliness, family cohesion, and social connection are the emotional currencies that resonate most powerfully with domestic audiences during the festive period, as observed across the sector by Clapboard. Rather than position NOS's technology products functionally, the campaign chose to embody the brand's value proposition — that connectivity makes meaningful human moments possible — through a fictional narrative involving a child and a mouse. This approach places NOS in direct creative competition with MEO and Vodafone not on network quality or pricing, but on cultural and emotional authority.
Marco Martins directed "The Magic Box" for NOS through production company Kilntheatre.clapboard.com/archive/nos-audiovisuais-respect-man-media">Ministério dos Filmes. Martins is a Portuguese filmmaker whose background in long-form narrative cinema brought a distinctly cinematic register to what might otherwise have been a conventional television spot. His involvement signals the kind of production ambition that Havas Portugal and NOS were willing to invest in for their 2018 Christmas moment, treating the film as a piece of authored storytelling rather than a branded commercial in the traditional sense.
The creative narrative centres on a young boy and a small mouse — a pairing that operates on the register of classic children's fable while remaining grounded in contemporary domestic life. Technology in the film is not presented as spectacle but as a quiet, almost invisible force that enables an emotional resolution between the two characters. This restraint is a deliberate creative choice, consistent with the broader Portuguese telecommunications advertising tradition of subordinating product visibility to emotional authenticity. The original music was composed by Nuno Maló, whose score supports the film's tonal register without overwhelming its quieter emotional beats.
The agency team at Havas Portugal responsible for bringing "The Magic Box" to production included Paulo Pinto, José Vieira, Nuno Leal, Rita Neves, Patrícia Caetano, and Rui Mascarenhas, whose collective creative and strategic contribution shaped the campaign's distinctive character, according to Festival-Cannes. The production was executed as a single film asset — a structural decision that concentrates creative risk and reward into one unified statement. For a brand operating in a market as analytically measured as Portugal's telecommunications sector, the willingness to entrust the entire Christmas communications budget to a single filmic narrative reflects genuine institutional confidence in the craft of storytelling as a brand-building instrument.
No verified performance data for "The Magic Box" is publicly available. No awards recognition for the campaign has been identified across Cannes Lions, Effies, One Show, D&AD, Clios, Webby, or WARC, according to Clapboard's archive records. The campaign carries a Clapboard Score of 54 out of 100, classified by the Clapboard Ad Archive as an "Exemplary Story," a designation that acknowledges the narrative integrity of the work while reflecting the competitive distance between it and the strongest global benchmark campaigns in the Christmas advertising category.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness rests on several verifiable creative decisions. The choice of a single film asset concentrates impact and avoids dilution across formats. The selection of Marco Martins as director through Ministério dos Filmes introduces a standard of filmmaking craft that elevates the work above category convention in Portugal. The use of original music by Nuno Maló rather than a licensed track signals investment in tonal ownership. And the emotional logic of the narrative — two unlikely companions brought together through technology — maps cleanly onto NOS's core brand positioning in a bundled-services market where MEO held dominant subscriber share, according to ANACOM. These structural choices suggest a campaign built for emotional durability rather than short-term conversion, consistent with the brand-building priorities of a challenger operator seeking to close a meaningful gap in cultural authority against the market leader.
"The Magic Box" is a 2018 NOS Christmas film directed by Marco Martins through Ministério dos Filmes. The narrative follows a young boy and a small mouse whose unlikely friendship is resolved through connected technology. Produced by Havas Portugal, the campaign launched in Portugal on November 28, 2018, as a single film asset.
Marco Martins directed "The Magic Box" for NOS. Martins worked through production company Ministério dos Filmes, bringing a cinematic filmmaking approach to the Christmas campaign. Original music was composed by Nuno Maló. The agency behind the campaign was Havas Portugal, with the creative team including Paulo Pinto and José Vieira among others.
Havas Portugal positioned NOS as an emotional rather than functional brand. In a Portuguese bundled-services market led by MEO with 40.6% subscriber share, according to ANACOM, NOS used a childhood fable narrative to compete on cultural and emotional authority rather than price or network specification, targeting the high-attention Christmas advertising window.
No awards recognition for "The Magic Box" has been identified across Cannes Lions, Effies, One Show, D&AD, Clios, Webby, or WARC, according to Clapboard's archive records. The Clapboard Ad Archive classifies the campaign as an "Exemplary Story" and assigns it a Clapboard Score of 54 out of 100, reflecting its narrative coherence against global benchmarks.
NOS followed "The Magic Box" with "The Discovery" in 2019. Also created by Havas Portugal, the follow-up campaign followed a girl investigating whether Santa Claus was real and operated under the hashtag #ADescoberta, according to Ads of the World. The consecutive campaigns established Havas Portugal as NOS's consistent creative partner for Christmas brand storytelling.
Portugal's bundled-services market generated approximately €1.582 billion in revenue in 2018, according to ANACOM, across four major operator groups including MEO, NOS, Vodafone, and Cabolink/ONI-NOWO. Mobile penetration reached 170.5% at end-2018, per ANACOM, reflecting a saturated, highly competitive market where emotional brand differentiation carried genuine strategic value.
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