The campaign ‘That Sky Feeling’ won Gold in Consumer Tech at The Drum Awards for Marketing. It shifted focus from product features to an emotional connection, transforming prospects’ perception of Sky TV as a lifestyle upgrade, leading to a 7ppt increase in consideration and a 19ppt rise in ‘Brand for me’ perception.
The last decade or two has seen many challenges thrown at Sky’s TV business: the proliferation of cheaper streaming services, short-form viewing on mobile phone apps, and content disappearing to apps. In many ways, Sky has adapted and thrived; developing its hardware to be the aggregator, negotiating and collaborating on deals with apps like Netflix and Paramount; developing its own original content proposition and changing formats like removing the need for a satellite. All very rational solutions to Sky’s situation, all very product-focused. And with lots of success: It has certainly retained its reputation as an innovator, justifying premium price points to its customers and keeping the bucket topped up with enough new customers.
But one thing has eluded Sky for many years: an emotional connection in advertising that goes deeper than a range of product features. Despite all this innovation, perceptions among many prospects have remained ‘traditional and premium – it’s the old-fashioned empty nester vs the dynamic vibrant and fun Gen Z streaming apps. It’s the service that your parents have. They’ve ruled Sky out; it’s not a brand for them. Despite watching content on multiple apps, clunkily clicking up and down the mazes of the different UIs, they’re happy with their current TV watching experience. Sky is not on their radar.
To unlock growth, Sky needed to make streaming audiences take a fresh look at Sky as a product that could improve their lives, and it needed to do something radically different to make them think differently about the brand.
Our approach required a major mindset shift. We went back to basics on insight generation; we brought in Been There Done That to reframe the problem, resulting in new research to talk to customers about what Sky means to them, rather than talking to prospects about what the barriers to Sky are, what problems they might have with their current TV setup, and what might overcome them.
Ultimately, this turned the task on its head – we needed to open people’s eyes and create some FOMO around how Sky would transform their TV viewing experience. Using the revelation (obvious in retrospect, the best insights usually are) that it is not just one thing that people love about Sky, it’s the sum of its parts. When you have Sky, the viewing experience is transformed; it’s a lifestyle upgrade, like a premium pair of headphones taking your music experience to the next level.
This resulted in a channel-agnostic platform – ‘That Sky Feeling’. Historically, Sky had looked for creative ideas rather than a platform; a vehicle for a TV campaign or a design for Out of Home. This new platform led to different creative ideas for different channels – then activated in the best way possible in each channel. In AV, this was increasingly hyperbolic metaphors to describe That Sky Feeling, and in Outdoor, it was more relatable metaphors. Tied together with the line Feels like…. But telly!
We also prioritized the emotional connection in lower funnel executions. We had seen a lot of learning from System 1 about the view that you still need to engage the right brain in order to drive Spike score, and often the best spike scoring ads have decent Star scores. This played out in our ‘Mid funnel’ more rational execution ‘Emperor’ where Andrew Garfield demonstrated how Sky’s voice control makes you feel powerful, just like a Roman Emperor.
Not content with transforming the viewing experience for our customers, this campaign transformed consideration for Sky TV among prospects – increasing it by 7ppts – and it has sustained this level far beyond the campaign duration. ‘Brand for me’ amongst those exposed increased 19ppts, and econometric modeling showed unprecedented ROMI and ‘Cost per consideration point’, with sales impact expected to be distributed over the next 18 months. It’s Sky’s most efficient new vehicle, with the best performance Sky has seen in years by some distance.
Simple, but revelatory – like all the best creative work always is. We all just need reminding from time to time.
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