The Background
NOW and essencemediacom understood that to build a connection with Irish audiences, sometimes it is better to let the content do the talking! Like majority of the Love Island contestants, NOW went searching for a couple that understood them and only had eyes Virgin Media
This campaign was on the Shortlist for Best Use of TV Sponsorship at the TAMI Awards 2023
The Challenge
NOW launched into the market early 2017. At that time the OTT category was made up of only NOW, Netflix and Amazon. Fast forward to 2022, and there had been a significant number of new entrants into the market – Disney+, Apple TV, Discovery+, Paramount+ and DAZN.
This made the market more cluttered and, as the majority of these players had a global PR and marketing presence, NOW found themselves struggling for share of voice (Disney dropped €6M annually 2020 – 2022) and share of market (Disney and Netflix dominance of the category and other new entrants meant NOW subscribers were being incentivised away from the brand through pricing and new content). NOW didn’t have the budget to compete with the global players but also felt that outspending these brands was never going to help win the long-term battle. NOW needed to punch above its weight when it came to cultural relevance.
The Strategy
NOW needed to grow cultural relevance to form a deeper engagement with younger prospect audiences. This would be the key to trial and loyalty for new customer prospects. This meant that essencemediacom couldn’t just “make an ad” and deliver it across many platforms which is usually the job of a media campaign. Cultural Relevance is about tapping into moments or movements that are important to the collective lives of the people that we want to reach.
Unlike Netflix, NOW don’t create their own content. They carry leading HBO programming (House of the Dragons), extensive back catalogue of favourite shows (The Sopranos) and exclusive Sky content (Gangs of London / Sport). Netflix generate a lot
of PR and headlines via casting announcements and behind-the-scenes footage from sets… all the items in media currently about the production of the forthcoming series of the Crown create real buzz about shows months before they air.
For NOW to create talkability, they had to source a significant cultural event and use that as a platform to drive their own relevance. That’s where Love Island came in! essencemediacom brought this partnership opportunity to NOW in 2021 and it had to be weighed up against some other sponsorship opportunities, namely.
• Was it big? Yes.
• Was it important to U35 audiences? More than any other show on TV during the year.
• Was it controversial / edgy? Very much so.
• Did it drive headlines across the country and beyond? Guaranteed.
• Would NOW be able to partner with the show and amplify their association with the show in a unique way? Definitely
Once NOW decided to partner with Love Island, EM knew they needed to build a comms plan based on the show but not exclusively at the times when the show was broadcast. The real challenge was creating activations outside of the show on other platforms that tied back into the conversations that were taking place about contestants by viewers to the show.
NOW had key pillars when it came to building out their association with Love Island
1) Reach through traditional media delivery – Promote their association with the show to the widest audiences. Here NOW topped and tailed every ad break within the programme Monday to Friday along with the Aftersun and Unseen Bits operating on Saturdays and Sundays. Outside of these stings saw branding within all promos for the programmes along with 10” stings on live streams and catch up across the Virgin Media Player and Virgin Media On-Demand.
2) Own the Second Screen – Be Part of the right conversations
Between the hours of 8-11pm every night, targeting all placements where Love Island topics, scandals and drama was discussed, meaning the conversation between NOW and their audience continued beyond when the TV show ended.
3) Widen the Love Island community – by using trusted voices to curate additional conversations about the show via NOW content
4) The final area of the comms strategy was to leverage already established connections with some of Ireland’s most recognisable content creators-showcasing more than just the content NOW had to offer was central in demonstrating their relevance to
Irish audiences. For example a podcast sponsorship with Orlaith Condon’s ‘My Pod on Paper’, the unofficial Love Island podcast kept the conversation going within the digital audio space. The final piece of the puzzle was securing the hilarious anchor team of Anne Doyle and James Kavanagh (the is no more popular Irish influencer) as NOW ambassadors. They kicked off proceedings for the NOW and Love Island coupling for Summer 2022 and were the centre of the most entertaining live tweets, GIFs, and Memes around online Love Island conversations.
The evolution of what a TV sponsorship is or could be, is really what set this collaboration apart from anything done previously. Coupling with the right TV property was vital. Understanding how to communicate to the audience was essential to drive Cultural Relevance for NOW.
The Results
EM always knew that Love Island was going to be a winner for Virgin Media and audiences. From a sponsor perspective though, NOW needed to be sure that they were partnering with a winning proposition that would deliver brand growth. In order to get
quantifiable results NOW commissioned online pre/post research to n=623 Irish adults. This gave concrete data points of the success for the sponsorship.
Key findings were as follows:
• 66% saw NOW as a good fit pre-exposure and rises to 77% post exposure to executions.
• This sponsorship activity made NOW more relevant for 7 in 10 likely Love Island viewers, while for well over half of this cohort, the executions clearly help in terms of stimulating curiosity about NOW, making NOW seem more authentic and aiding a
stronger emotional connection to NOW.
• The commercial potential on the back of the sponsorship is further emphasised with over 6 in 10 likely viewers more likely to consider NOW in the future as a result of seeing the executions.
• 72% of those that would consider NOW pre-exposure to the executions are more likely to consider NOW, and 56% of those that wouldn’t consider NOW pre-exposure are more likely to consider.
• NOW also saw a baseline increase in subscriptions by 15% over the run of the show. This demonstrated a direct correlation between sponsorship awareness and consideration and sales. (Offer / Costs were similar vs other years so it was not a pricing incentive that drove additional subscriptions)
The research results had the proof points that NOW needed to demonstrate that a TV sponsorship of a culturally relevant show was the right way to succeed in a very cluttered market.
It couldn’t have been done without a commitment by NOW and essencemediacom to amplify their relationship with the show across multiple platforms to create culturally significant moments that got people talking about the show and interested in subscribing to NOW
“We wanted to do something different around our Love Island partnership with VMS and we certainly succeeded. The activations that we built around the series were all about talkability and relevance, and we know that these were the levers to pull if we wanted to deliver long term growth for our business. The results delivered against both our brand and sales metrics, and we couldn’t be happier with how this sponsorship worked across all the stakeholders who were involved at every stage.”
Rebecca Stapleton, Campaigns and Partnerships Controller, NOW Ireland
Credits
Brand:
NOW
Media Agency:
essencemediacom
Award:
TAMI Awards Shortlist: Best Use of TV Sponsorship 2023