Front Row Seats
SKY TV New Zealand
Issue 9 | December 2008
Agency
Rapp Collins
Creative Team
Wayne Pick - Executive Creative Director; Kim Pick - Head of Copy; Katie Benge - Senior Designer
Production Team
Marcel de Ruiter - Production Manager
Other Credits
Emma Allen - Account Manager;Robert Limb - Managing Director
Date
March 2008
Background
SKY TV in New Zealand offers 35 channels of entertainment including sports, movies, kids channels and documentaries. But after years of growth, SKY TV was facing major challenges: a market nearing saturation, competition from a new free-to-air channel, and falling interest in major drawcard rugby, following the All Blacks’ failure in the 2007 World Cup. SKY TV had traditionally used door-to-door sales and telemarketing to recruit but costs were increasing and it needed to find a more cost-effective way. Historic attempts at DM had proved unsuccessful, but in 2008, SKY TV wanted to have a final try.
Idea
Insights told the agency that what SKY’s audience valued most was entertainment - and in New Zealand, nothing says ‘entertainment’ more than the look of an instantly recognisable ‘Ticketek’ or ‘Ticketmaster’ seat stub. The imagery is normally associated with big events, often big money, lots of anticipation and excitement – especially for the New Zealand Heartland audience. So Rapp Collins sent them front row seats to all the upcoming action: Super 14 Rugby, the Cricket Tour, Formula One racing, box office smash movies, rock concerts… because, when they sign up to SKY TV, that’s what they’ll be getting. Better yet, the price tag was either ‘free’ or ‘half price’.
Results
Response rates were over 250% above expectation for addressed DM, and almost 1000% above expectation for unaddressed. 100% of calls from addressed mail were converted to sales. The trial proved that addressed mail could return an ROI of 209% in year one alone. Given the average customer tenure of 10 years, that was a potential ROI of over 2700%. Unaddressed mail was returning an ROI of 170% in year one and a potential lifetime ROI of over 2500%. SKY TV had been ready to write off DM. Instead, it’s rewritten its acquisition model and the campaign is rolling out nationally.
Target audience
Heartland New Zealand families. Mums and Dads with kids or teenagers that demand to be entertained, and who have a reasonable awareness of SKY TV.
Volume/ size of campaign
Test mailing to 13,000 households in the Hamilton area.
Our Thoughts
Compare and contrast with the Belgacom ‘Famous Coaches’ campaign. The briefs would have been similar. How do you use direct marketing to grow your subscriber base? But where Famous had a brilliant strategy this seems to me to have been a pretty ordinary brief which the creatives overcame simply through the power of a good idea.