Sky Tv: SKY Livespots, 2

Credits & Description:

Award: AME Bronze Medallion
Competition: AME
Competition Year: 2014
Agency: serviceplan group gmbh & co. kg
Agency Country: GERMANY
Agency City: MUNICH
Competition: 193 2014 AME Awards
Category: PS17 media promotion
Category Group: products & services
Brand/Sponsor: SKY
Title: SKY Livespots
Item Company: serviceplan
Item Country: GERMANY
Creative Director: Alexander Schill (CCO)
Production Company: N/A
Production Company Producer: N/A
Product Type SKY
Campaign Start 02 / 18 / 2013
Campaign End 02 / 20 / 2013
Campaign Ran germany
Campaign Description promotion
Marketing Context
Challenge:
Due to post-WW2 regulations and subsidizations, public broadcast has been very powerful for a long time in Germany. Football and other major sports events had been broadcast for free for a long time.
Therefore pay TV is very unpopular in Germany.
People don’t understand why they should pay for premium content. They think Sky is depriving them from their natural right to watch football.
Opportunity:
Germans still love to watch football more than anything – and the biggest national team Bayern München was a favorite for the Champions League win.
Relevance:
We gave away the exclusive Sky viewing pleasure live and for free. This generosity marked a change in public perception: From the attitude of snobbish top-down exclusivity to the positive image of an enabler of great emotions.
Making our stunt culturally and PR-wise highly relevant.
Campaign Planning
Basically, we relied on age-old advertising principles:
The Teaser. The only thing worse than not having something is to only have little of it. By giving just a little of our exclusive product, we increased desire for it.
Product Demonstration. People tend to understand the product value when they can experience it. With our live ads, we basically made them Sky customers for free for a few seconds.
Reciprocity. When given something as a gift, people tend to give something back. We gave away the premium Sky experience and expected to get back subscriptions.
Marketing & Media Strategy
Working closely together with the Media and PR departments, we wanted to maximize the effect of the campaign, while facing the uncertainty of a live event.
Due to the idea’s and target group’s nature, TV was set as the main media.
The media consisted of six individual ads with 60 seconds length each (40 seconds live content), on four major channels (SAT.1, ProSieben, KabelEins, Sport1).
The specific ad placement plan was developed with three main objectives:
1. Relevant surrounding: two movie highlights, two popular sitcoms and a sports talkshow.
2. Highest probability of action during the live ads: previous matches of both teams were evaluated, in terms of offensive strategy over time.
3. Coverage of all the important stages of the match: placements were spread on four channels, taking place during the whole length of the game.
On the day before the match, the PR department distributed the announcement to exclusive media partners, capitalizing on public anticipation of the important match. When the unforeseen happened – we captured the 2:1 goal in one of the live ads – we quickly provided the media outlets with video/image coverage and again made the headlines on the day after the match.
Creative Strategy
Since we mostly just broadcast live content, creative execution was not so much in our hands.
What we did: We started every ad with an intro and the well known Champions League sound logo to instantly grab the viewers attention. We relied on experienced commentators as well as live video editors to capture the excitement on the field to the best extent.
We concluded the ads with a direct purchase option to turn excitement into sales.
And most important:
We worshipped the god of football to make sure we got a live-goal...:)
Evidence of Results
After the announcement on the day before the match, the whole of Germany talked about the idea: From major offline/online newspapers (front page in biggest national newspaper BILD) to specialized press, radio and social media.
During the match, more than 5.3 Mio. viewers saw at least one of the live ads.
The topic was trending on twitter, reaching it’s peak when even a goal was captured in one of the live ads.
Altogether, more than 160 Mio. Media Impressions were generated. In the days after the match, sign-ups for Sky raised by 24% compared to previous matches.
Target Audience
Primary target group:
Predominantly male free TV viewers between the age of 14 and 59 in Germany who like to watch football.
Chosen because they are potential customers for the Sky footbal/sports subscriptions.
Secondary target group:
Male and female public between the age of 14 and 59 in Germany.
Chosen because they are potential targets for the overall change in attitude towards Sky.
Talent 1: Alexander Schill|Chief Creative Officer
Talent 2: Matthias Harbeck|Executive Creative Director
Talent 3: Oliver Palmer|Creative Director
Talent 4: Sandra Loibl|Creative Director
Talent 5: Lorenz Langgartner|Copywriter
Talent 6: Frank Seiler|Copywriter
Talent 7: Franz Roeppischer|Art Director
Talent 8: Felix Emmerlich|Account Supervisor
Talent 9: Andreas Heuschneider|Graphic Design
Talent 10: Florian Panier|Creative Producer
Talent 11: Daniel Epailly|Media Agency