Huffington Post: CONVERSATIONS START HERE

Credits & Description:

Type of entry: Use of Media

Category: Best Use of Screens

Advertiser: AOL HUFFINGTON POST MEDIA GROUP UK

Product/Service: HUFFINGTON POST UK

Agency: GRAVITY ROAD London, UNITED KINGDOM

Producer: Tim Last (Grand Visual)

Creative/Development Manager: George Delius (Cbs Outdoor)

Head Of Digital Trading: Tim Cartwright (Cbs Outdoor)

Online Acquisition Manager: Nicky Traynor (Atom42)

Director: Stacy Oakley (Atom42)

Founder: Andy Atalia (Atom42)

Art Director: Shruti Veeramachineni (Gravity Road)

Head Of Production: Simon Kearney (Gravity Road)

Content Director: Mary Nguyen (Gravity Road)

Founder: Mark Eaves (Gravity Road)

Founder: Mark Boyd (Gravity Road)







Results and Effectiveness





Across 2012, HuffPost leapt from 10th to 5th in the UK market. Modelling showed tube investment x3 more effective than other communications.



Leap (+11%) in site usage by key commuter audiences. Dwell time 6 minutes+ (200% greater than average) with greater propensity to comment and share content.



Over 2m+ commuters reached: leaps in brand awareness from 39% to 53%.



400k+ (UVs) were served HuffPost content mobile devices. (70% of these via Apple devices: valuable urban users).



Huge brand recognition for those exposed to Underground activity (54% vs 4% control). 34% more likely to consider HuffPost to be “innovative", “cool”, “social”.







Creative Execution





Conversations Start Here is the HuffPost’s brand promise. We started conversations on the tube.



Media technology was harnessed - and in some cases specially built - to create new “screen gateways” to connect commuters with HuffPost



We targeted commuter’s mobile screens by striking a partnership with Virgin Mobile Wi-fi’s newly installed service across the tube. HuffPost served exclusive news splash pages to EVERY mobile user on the Tube.



Digital video projection screens, with dynamic, live-feed connections were designed and built. This allowed content and comments from relevant, topical & provocative blogs to be fed through in real-time. This led to further comment from mobile users.



Digital video panels across the Underground were taken over to showcase the range of famous faces, who write for HuffPost. Creative was timed for when they uploaded a new blog to the site. 30+ creatives ran including Alice Cooper, Cherie Blair, Sir Richard Branson, Sir Martin Sorrell and more.







Insights, Strategy and the Idea





We wanted to demonstrate that HuffPost is the most innovative, socialized news brand in London, whilst driving rapid growth and penetration.



But the London news market is already the most competitive in the world, with large sums of media investment needed to grow conventional share of voice. The commuter audience is crucial and valuable, and research showed they are hungry for news, yet frustrated when they have no mobile access.



So we found the one part of London that was still isolated from realtime news: the London Underground. We deployed our media cleverly to create entirely new connections to commuters. This would provide a powerful advantage over our established competitors.



We created the first live news environment across the London Underground, using a groundbreaking combination of advertising & mobile screens, to bring news and debate to London commuters in realtime.