Execut ive Summary
Black Friday is quite simply the biggest day of the year for Currys PC World, in fact it has rapidly become the principle trading day in most retailers calendar. This brings with it both opportunities and challenges.
The opportunity and objective for Dixons was clear; we needed to prompt action and drive short term response. In order to do this, we had to capitalise on this huge consumer interest to drive the largest single days’ worth of sales in the year. The challenge was delivering on this in the face of shared ambitions with our core competitors.
Therefore, we needed to cut through the clutter and shout the loudest; getting lost within our competitors communications wasn’t an option. We needed consumers to view CPCW as the number one retail destination. Newsbrands gave us the platform to do this and provided a channel we know is tried and tested from an ROI point of view. Utilising Newsbrands alongside other channels, we created the CPCW Black Friday Roadblock.
Background & Objective
Black Friday has had a huge impact on consumer mind-‐set and purchase habits since it came to prominence in the US and more recently in the UK. This has meant historical sales trends have been impacted upon as consumers focus their attention on this single day, pulling forward typical sales spikes in the run up to Christmas.
The level of growth of BF as a fully formed consumer facing proposition was evident in the sheer volume of sales in 2015 – Google estimated this to be upwards of £1.1bn through online sales alone (this was up 36% on the previous year).
This huge groundswell of consumer interest and media attention has therefore provided a massive opportunity for retailers. The communications objective for CPCW was to ensure that we dominated key broadcast and digital channels, drive the highest SOV amongst our core competitor set and prompt action. The business objective attached to this was clear; short term sales.
To deliver on this and alleviate some of the pressure on Black Friday alone, we constructed a comms plan which balanced out the event across a longer period -‐ running in the week leading up to and through to the following Monday (Cyber Monday).
Newsbrands were instrumental in allowing us to deliver a consistent presence across this period to position CPCW at the front of consumers’ minds, ‘warming up’ the market ahead of the main event on the Friday. A sense of immediacy through print was key to illicit short term reaction; key national press titles ensured we could deliver on this, at scale, and in conjunction with other channels.
Insight
There were some key insights that we took into planning for the 2016 campaign:
• We had to utilise multiple touch points in unison to truly cut through and the halo effect this generates was an important factor at planning stage. For example, we knew from the Newsbrands ROI Retail study that print newsbrands make TV spend work twice as hard, as well as boosting radio revenue by up to 10 times.
• The same research also highlighted the sweet spot investment percentage for Newsbrands as part of the overall media spend as around 20% -‐ 30%. This insight (alongside Gain Theory’s econometric work) helped guide decisions around the most effective spend split by channel.
• Our competitor monitoring through Nielsen, Ebiquity and general market trends indicated that competitor spend was likely to increase YoY. We couldn’t afford to stand-‐still and risk our SOV being diluted in this context, dominant share was a must
• Black Friday was no longer a new concept. Consumers are now well trained on seeking out the best deals and search trends from Google showed that this was now more likely to be done at an individual product level (rather than generic “Black Friday deals”)
• CPCW brand tracking (conducted by Millward Brown) from BF in 2015 showed that our press activity had weaker persuasion and credibility than our standard campaigns running throughout the year. Newsbrands continue to provide us with platforms that command a sense of trust from its readers, meaning we would be able to leverage this positive association to tackle these perceptions by partnering with some of the biggest titles in the market.
• Lumen eye tracking research had shown that average dwell time for electrical retailers in newsprint is between 2 – 3seconds. The challenge therefore was how we used print formats that delivered enough impact to provide a clear differentiator amongst the Black Friday noise.
These insights led to some clear media principles which informed planning:
• Lead SOV across the market • Differentiate media buys to cut through the noise • Evolve Black Friday comms to cater for a more educated audience • Utilise multiple touch points to match consumer mind-‐set in the run up to & on
Black Friday itself • Be innovative with our use of format
It was very clear that we needed to partner with newsbrands.
The Plan
The ambition for our Black Friday activity was to deliver scale across key channels to ensure dominance, drive disruption and a sense of immediacy. To do this we created the ‘B lack Friday Roadblock’ – we wanted to own the biggest TV shows, the biggest newspapers and the biggest websites in the market.
We saw press ROI increase from the previous year’s campaign so evolved our activity here even further with takeovers in more titles. The inclusion of newsbrands, alongside channels we knew would deliver from an ROI perspective, created an integrated campaign that stood out amongst the rest. This holistic approach across multiple channels was used to ensure that from a consumer’s point of view, the campaign appeared greater than the sum of its parts. We planned to deliver this though the following comms framework:
Stage 1, Announce:
• Through TV we altered our standard end-‐of-‐week phasing to run from the Monday, launching the CPCW ‘Black Tag Event’ in some high-‐profile programming including Coronation Street (9.7m individual viewers) and Dispatches (3m)
• While TV led the ‘announce’ phase of the campaign, it was important for all media to sew the seed to their relevant audiences, so we selected 2 of the most prominent titles in the newsbrands market to shout about “Black Tag is coming”! The Sun and the Times captured two ends of our ABC1 spectrum maximising our reach. Throughout the week we built coverage with additional titles and guaranteed front-‐of-‐mind presence for CPCW
• We ran a combination of 10 and 30 second teaser ads on radio from the Monday, delivering over 16m ABC1 Adult impacts before the day itself
• OOH also played a key role in announcing our BF deals week, allowing us to deliver 9.8m ABC 1 Ad impacts before Black Friday through digital Underground and Rail formats
Stage 2, Dominate: • Newsbrands formed the focal point of our ambition to ‘own’ Black Friday. The
print activity consisted of 3 unmissable takeovers, dominating three of the highest circulating titles on Black Friday with just under 900cms per title in the first third of the book. This not only ensured huge exposure to those readers, it meant we had an enormous captured market over our competitors. Combined with a digital HPTO on Sun.co.uk, we were sure to DOMINATE the newsbrands market and stand above our competitors. Through the national print market alone, we delivered 51% coverage of ABC1 Adults (an enormous 35m impacts)
• Across the Black Friday week we reached 19m ABC1 Ads through TV (delivering the fourth highest number of TVRs across all advertisers in the market)
• Dig ita l takeovers across the Sun, YouTube and MSN allowed us to reach a third of the UK population online
Stage 3, Sustain: • To ensure we had a consistent drumbeat of activity we maintained the weight of our
media through to Cyber Monday across all channels • We maintained our presence in print over the weekend across all titles with large
fractional formats to ensure interest was sustained up until Cyber Monday • Our newsbrands activity across the week provided the greatest SOV amongst our
competitors; 40% of CMs and double our nearest rival • Through display we reached 45.3m unique users alone across the week, driving a
161% uplift in sales YoY
Results
We went into Black Friday with clear communications and business objectives; Lead SOV amongst our core competitor set and drive the most sales in one day the business had ever seen. We delivered on both fronts.
We drove lead SOV across TV and press, establishing 30% share across Black Friday week. This was higher than all of CPCW key competitor brands including Argos, Amazon, John Lewis, AO and Very.
Lumen research showed that our Black Friday print activity was better recalled than our standard ads by a massive 47 percentage points. Our activity was in fact the second most recalled across the entire market according to the same study
Millward Brown brand tracking also showed that, compared with the campaign last year, our Black Friday week activity was more credible and persuasive. The formats we used on Black Friday specifically were also recorded as being more impactful.
Client V iew
“The importance of Black Friday to our business cannot be over stated. The media strategy formulated by Blue 449 therefore was fundamental to delivering on firm commercial targets and the ambition to improve upon what was already a record sales day last year. We were able to do this and drive the single biggest day of sales. Newsbrands were an integral part to our comms plan, allowing us to deliver mass scale, generate disruption and drive short term response from consumers. We continue to see positive ROI figures from Newsbrands to reinforce their effectiveness as a channel on plans and see no reason why this should change going into Black Friday this year.”
James Cheetham, Head of Advertising, Currys PC World