2015 Bronze Best Use of Door Drops

SapientNitro London

Sky UK

Whole story, half price

The Team

Sharon Hegarty - Marketing Director Trading Hannha Burnett - Head of Direct Marketing
Liam Popham - Targeted Media Executive Julia Benwell Froggatt - Creative Lead - Art
Matt Lord - Creative Lead - Copy Tristan Hyde - Account Manager Leah Wolfenden - Group Account Director, Whistl

Campaign Overview

Door drops have proven to be successful and cost-effective for Sky in the past, so are a key medium for the broadcaster. Now, faced with increased marketplace competition, it needed to communicate how it was different, what was new and the worth-paying-for choice it could offer to Freeview customers. Working with Sky’s insights and decision sciences team, the campaign team developed a model that, among other things, looked at pay TV penetration, risk, affluence, geography and propensity to purchase. And by combining this data-driven insight with its most popular shows and a clear price offer, the network managed to win new customers and outperform its existing champion campaign.

Strategy

Sky could target postcodes with a high concentration of Freeview customers, making door drop the ideal strategic choice to target a large audience who were not currently paying for TV. This target audience didn’t usually see the value in pay TV or felt it was too expensive – so the campaign used the most popular show anywhere on TV, Game of Thrones, to entice them. This was dangled with a persuasive halfprice offer and intriguing creative to create a proposition people found hard to refuse: entertainment everyone was talking about for less than they expected. Sky used best practice mail principles like clear eye paths, tangible customer benefits, bullet points and bold calls to action alongside behavioural economic techniques such as nudging (“Our most popular TV bundle”), herding (“The box sets everyone’s talking about”) and chunking (clearly comparing each bundle content).

Creativity

The creative used an unusual square format to achieve initial standout from competitors and other conventionally shaped pieces. It then spent time selecting a particularly striking full-bleed Game of Thrones image to pair up with its strong offer. To complement the theme, half the image was covered by ‘Get the whole story for half the price’ to tempt the recipient to open further. The team also took care to retain an uncluttered, premium feel in the interior page layout, reflecting the premium positioning of Sky TV, and used clear eye paths, bullet points and highlighting of key messaging to convey a lot of information clearly. The copy was kept tight and focused on the key features of four TV bundles. Drawing separate key lines around extra features and a strong call to action helped retain space and clarity for the whole piece.

Results

Results were outstanding, comfortably outperforming Sky’s previous champion door drop. Acquisition was 15% above target and conversion 18% above target, showing that the “whole story, half the price” offer was hard for people to refuse as both an emotional draw and a rational deal. Incremental sales beat the previous champion format by 22% and delivered a 1.7:1 ROMI.