Bookbeat campaign makes noise by using TV

Key Points

• Bookbeat wanted to increase awareness and consideration
• They embarked on their first ever TV campaign 
• As a result, both awareness and consideration increased significantly

The Challenge

Bookbeat is an audiobook service which was launched in the UK in February 2017. It is owned by Bonnier, who have over a hundred years’ worth of experience with creating, refining, and distributing great stories.

Bookbeat’s winning formula, that had worked in Northern Europe, consisted of podcasts, influencers and digital display but this approach failed to deliver in the UK market. This was due to podcasts in the UK having an expensive cost per sign up and influencer activity being susceptible to wastage by reaching individuals who consume media in English but reside in territories that cannot use Bookbeat.

Their primary objectives were to:

• increase awareness (to be evidenced by increased traffic to site)
• drive consideration of the service.

Bookbeat therefore tasked their media agency, Starcom, to create a strategy for a larger-scale UK campaign to run in late 2017.

The TV Solution

In order to create the large scale desired, Bookbeat decided to try TV for the first time. This is because TV is extremely successful at delivering high profit ROI and so they were confident that the TV campaign would drive sign-ups. As well as this, the ‘fame’ effect created by an advert appearing on TV would help the campaign feel much weightier than its <£100k budget.

TV ads are nearly six times more talked about than the next nearest media (source: Ipsos Media CT), which was exactly what was needed to create buzz around the brand. As such, 100% of the campaign budget was invested into TV.

The Plan

Working with Starcom, Bookbeat decided that the TV campaign would launch solely on ITV in order to align with the biggest shows on TV and therefore generate mass awareness and sign ups. Furthermore, by running solely on ITV, it would create the illusion of being a much heavier weight campaign, despite its small budget.

The campaign aired on the ITV region Granada (Liverpool & Manchester) and on STV in Scotland (Glasgow & Edinburgh). This allowed large regions to be targeted whilst also staying in the budget.

The campaign was aired for one week in early December in the hope of:

• Capitalising on pre- Christmas gifting
• Making the most of the budget due to TV CPTs being lower in December than across much of the year.
• Giving Bookbeat 100% Share of Voice as Audible, their main competitors, historically has not advertised in this week.
• Aligning with one of the top 3 commercial programmes of the year, I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here
• Creating as much impact as possible on one channel over one week

Results

• Planned TVRs in both regions over-delivered by a double-digit percentage
• 40% of all UK Individuals were reached by the campaign at a frequency of more than 3
• The uplift in traffic to site was a considerable 235% when compared to week before campaign
• Total number of Page Views increased by an astounding 653% when compared to week before campaign
• The average session duration increased by 262% when compared to week before campaign

In summary, not only did the TV campaign drive more visitors to the site, but these visitors were of a higher quality, spending more time with the brand and its content. Bookbeat deemed the campaign so successful that this led to increased investment in TV in the UK in 2018.

Databank

Sector: Entertainment

Brand: Bookbeat

Campaign objectives: To increase awareness (traffic to site) and drive consideration of the service.

Target Audience: ABC1 adults

Budget: less than £100,000

Campaign Dates: 4^th December – 10^th December 2017

TV Usage: 20 Second Spots

Media Agency:  Starcom