Sky Sports’ Challenge
At the start of the 2020-21 Premier League season, football fans were still unable to attend live games due to the coronavirus pandemic.
As the established home of football, Sky Sports was the central place that fans could still watch their team.
Sky wanted to make football fans aware that with the start of the new season, there was “Everything to Play For”:
- Football fans who didn’t have Sky
- Football fans who had Sky, but didn’t subscribe to Sky Sports
We made attention grabbing ads
- Desktop and mobile skins gave Sky Sports prominent branding on the page
- The design showcased the sporting talent of the Premier League – focusing with imagery on the “Big Six” most supported teams
- We maximised Sky’s video assets with an expanded video player
- Incorporated a call-to-action for those most engaged to “discover more”
And pinpointed the audiences with data & context
- We implemented 13 different 1st & 3rd party data segments to find both audiences online – including:
• Current viewers of football on TV but not via Sky Sports (e.g. Match of the Day)
• Those with a keen interest in football and football related content - We complemented with keyword targeting aligned to football, Sky Sports and the ‘Big Six’ teams
- And delivered the creative in contextually relevant environments relevant to both the audience, football and Sky Sports
As your digital brand partner, our goal was to make your audience
The differentology approach
One of the UK’s most innovative Independent research companies, Differentology’s mission is to to help demonstrate ‘effective brand engagement” to your challenge.
The CONTROL group:
150 respondents participate in the survey, answering questions without being exposed to the campaign activity, in order to give a benchmark reading across several metrics (e.g. awareness, familiarity, consideration, likelihood to recommend, etc.)
The EXPOSED group:
150 separate respondents also answer the same questions, but with the key difference of having been exposed to the campaign activity.
*The exposure to the activity is via a web–based task whereby the exposed group respondents visit & spend some time browsing a webpage similar to where the campaign will be distributed to, to mimic a natural exposure in a realistic environment, as opposed to a static screenshot/video insolation.
Measuring awareness of Sky Sports
Think about the brand
Unprompted brand awareness – First mention
When thinking about channels or services that show sports, please can you write down all that come to mind.
Unprompted brand awareness – Any mention
When thinking about channels or services that show sports, please can you write down all that come to mind – Sky Sports
Prompted ad awareness
Have you seen or heard any advertising (including sponsorship and promotions) FOR any of the following channels or services that show sports recently? – Sky Sports
Measuring perception of Sky Sports
Feel about the brand
Brand perceptions
To what extent do you agree or disagree that Sky Sports – Top 3 ‘strongly agree’ shown
Brand impression
To what extent has this activity changed your impression of Sky Sports?
Measuring consideration of Sky Sports
Behave towards the brand
Likelihood to recommend
On a scale of 0-10, how likely would you be to recommend Sky Sports to family or friends? – Top 3 ‘likely to recommend’ shown
Brand consideration
How likely or unlikely would you be to consider Sky Sports in the future – Top 3 ‘likely’ shown
Extra time
Creative considerations
Creative diagnostic
How much do you agree these words and phrases could be applied to this activity? – Top 5 ‘agree’ shown
In summary
How we improved awareness, perception and consideration of Sky Sports to football fans at the start of the 2020-21 Premier League season
We engaged both audiences to think, feel and behave more positively to Sky Sports
Wrapping it all up
We created an IMPACTFUL MEDIA solution to grab consumer attention…
Which we delivered to two different Sky audiences through DATA and premium publisher CONTEXT…
Achieving independently measured, EFFECTIVE brand engagement…
With massive INCREASES for both audiences across:
- Awareness
- Perception
- Consideration
