The Background
August 22 saw a brand new launch from Sky in the form of Sky Glass. Dish free TV. The challenge for EssenceMediacom was simple yet ambitious. Wherever someone was and whatever media channel they were consuming in their day, EM would reach them and showcase the new product arrival – Sky Glass. This campaign won the Best Use of TV Strategy award at the 2023 TAMI Awards.
The Challenge
Sky have been duking it out in Ireland for a number of years against the main competitor set; Virgin Media, Vodafone and EIR. This category has greatly diversified with the entry of deep pocketed new brands, offering subscription streaming services in Disney+, Netflix, Amazon Prime and Apple TV. The new streaming competition offered a premium service without a requirement for a satellite dish, leveraging a rich pool of legacy and original content.
Sky invest heavily in Ireland and are the paid TV leaders with a consistent share of voice of 35-40% each month.
August 22 saw a brand new launch from Sky in the form of Sky Glass. A bold and daring entry into the hyper competitive market of TV set sales, going head-to-head with electronic giants Sony, Samsung and LG. Glass was a dish free solution, bringing new product innovation to the masses.
Launch objectives were to successfully penetrate and disrupt the TV set sales market, to achieve 95% +1 awareness of Sky Glass in the 4 weeks launch, to gain a 50% share of voice and hit ambitious sales targets of the TVs and accompanying Sky packages.
The Strategy
Sky Glass broke down a number of legacy barriers to Sky. Individuals living in residences with strict no dish policies became a new prospect for launch. Families who wanted to upgrade their TV set with flexibility to finance at 0% APR, became a new prospect. Early adopters and tech enthusiasts became a prospect.
So although EssenceMediacom had detailed audience research across a variety of core Sky prospect segments, Sky Glass was going to significantly broaden the target prospects away from Sky’s historic segmentation groups.
EM could potentially attract students in shared dormitories, flourishing young families, or sports and movies fanatics across all age ranges to name just a few so they needed a media launch strategy that considered how a day in these people’s lives would be fundamentally differ to each other.
The strategy and launch idea needed to deliver mass reach and mass awareness on launch day. TV and broader AV played a fundamental role in achieving this. EssenceMediacom work with Sky on quarterly econometric models, alongside brand modelling, which provides detailed intelligence on the performance of TV and AV.
Covering both sales efficiency and also the positive impact on key brand metrics; spontaneous awareness and ITP. TV remains the strongest driver of all these metrics, across all products, so was the first priority when delivering the optimal launch media plan.
The AV strategy was underpinned by the AV philosophy at EssenceMediacom, which is a OneAV approach. As the way people are consuming video has evolved their planning needed to reflect this. They have moved from planning TV and video in silo, to holistic AV planning
For launch day EM implemented a strategy and delivered an impactful execution which guaranteed that ‘wherever someone was and whatever media channel they were consuming at a specific time, they would reach them with Sky Glass. It needed to be disruptive, deliver mass reach quickly and capture widespread attention. The idea was named Attention Domination and it was more ambitious than anything seen before in Ireland.
The Plan
The plan for a nationwide Attention Domination across Ireland on launch day started by identifying 3 key peaks of consumption across the day. For this strategy to be successful, these 3 peaks not only needed to maximise reach to the prospect audiences, but EM needed to understand bespoke transmission schedules across multiple channels. To achieve this activation EsssenceMediacom worked with every main Irish media owner.
TV was the lead and priority channel and EM researched all channel roadblock opportunities across the day. They wanted to align this then more widely with a full audio roadblock, at the exact same time. Following much negotiation they identified 9:05am, 13:15pm and 9:10pm as the 3 target attention domination peaks, which would work across their broadcast channel selection. The critical time period was within 3 minutes of these time peaks. Our video launch asset had to be seen across all AV environments within these peaks. This would ensure that wherever a prospect was and whatever media they were consuming at that specific time, they saw Sky Glass showcased.
With much of the broader AV running across algorithmic channels, EssenceMediacom needed a unique, trading and optimisation plan. They set up bespoke, 3 minute boost buys across all programmatic channels and by maxing their bidding strategies across platforms, they were able to guarantee that Sky Glass would be the top bidder across exchanges. This effectively forced the launch video into the prosects browsing environment. It had never been attempted before and a very manual and granular process.
All video environments were prioritised in line with the holistic AV ethos. Multi-channel BVOD, social video across; Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Twitter and Snap. In addition YouTube non-skippable video placements complimented by additional online video placements spanning the programmatic network. The boost bid strategy delivered the launch video asset across all channels within 3 attention domination peaks. They also aligned digital OOH.
So whether you were flicking through social media, sat on your sofa at home or walking down Grafton Street, in each of our 3 peaks everyone saw the launch ad.
The launch strategy was activated exactly as planned.
The AV creative across various platforms applied best practise principles. EM utilised a 40” creative for the linear TV. The extended time also enabled them to tease, excite and unpack benefits in the execution. Moving across the wider OneAV plan, second length creative cut downs optimised to each platform were produced. Aligning the creative to the individual platform was a priority.
Following the attention domination launch, all AV then continued into campaign phase two. EssenceMediacom’s proprietary AVR calculator enabled them to holistically plan AV across TV, BVOD, OLV and social video using our their universal AV metric. They considered audience platform index, view rate, viewability and ad recall to power the calculator and align with traditional TV.
The Results
The results;
- Sky Glass was the No.1 TV set seller in Ireland across both September and October in unit sales. Beating the market leaders; Sony, Samsung and LG
- The launch campaign delivered 97.6% +1 reach vs. adults in the first 5 days, reaching 3.6M adults.
- The 3 attention domination peaks delivered an uplift in search volume within a 3 minute window of the peak daily average of; +36% 9.05am peak, +188% 1.15pm peak and +234% 9.10pm peak (Google Trends Aug 22). This trend was also mirrored in site traffic (GA 22).
Sky Glass was independently measured both using EM’s Marketing Mix Modelling and also Contact Optimiser, which models brand metrics and performance of media channel.
- TV was the strongest modelled channel performance at launch, shown as an index of average channels being 1, TV was 2.6. Using MMM this is a pure read of TV performance as seasonality, price, competitor impact etc are all isolated and excluded
- Furthermore the positive multiplier effect from TV was 57, so delivering a significant halo across other media channels also which ran alongside TV.
- Number 3 in our media channel efficiency rank was Connected TV via YouTube. This delivered a performance index of 1.8, with a multiplier of 1.23.
Looking then at channel performance via Contact Optimiser, TV again was the number 1 media channel driving both spontaneous awareness and intention to purchase, which are the two metrics modelled. Further results from the campaign included brand lift studies which were in place for pre and post analysis.
- Connected TV (YouTube) – Absolute lift 7% – which means that people who saw our ad on YouTube were 22.7% more likely to be aware of Sky Glass than people who hadn’t seen the ad on Connected TV YouTube. The YouTube benchmark advised was a good absolute lift of 2% Launch performance was also accompanied by strong business results;
- Highest ever footfall- retail store footfall increased and retail sales exceeded forecast,
- Increased customer base – over 70% of Glass sales were new Sky TV customers, with only 30% of existing customers upgrading to Glass. A huge win in opening up new headroom and ensuring business growth.
So in summary the Sky Glass launch was a big success with all target KPIs hit and AV was very much at the heart of this. Delivering mass awareness in a hyper time targeted way, exceeding sales targets along with driving a strong movement in brand metrics which are so notoriously challenging to shift at pace.
EM demonstrated how powerful a OneAV approach can be. A truly holistic approach to AV planning, powered by bespoke tooling, has created a blueprint which future proofs our approach to AV planning. This will become more critical to agencies and our clients as the TV and AV market in Ireland continues to evolve and fragment.
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‘This was an extremely exciting & innovative launch strategy, deeply rooted in TV. With a new product launch, building awareness and understanding of the product quite quickly is key.The attention domination has never been done before in Ireland, and immediately we saw the impact of it, with a significant direct correlation in search and site traffic at these 3 times of day. The campaign smashed all KPIs and sales targets for Sky Glass, as a result of a really clever and impactful launch strategy delivered by EssenceMediacom’
Melissa Byrne, Head of Media, Sky Ireland
Credits
Brand:
Sky Glass
Media Agency:
EssenceMediacom
Award:
TAMI Awards Winner Best Use of TV Strategy 2023