In the past, many attempts have been made to increase Sky’s success – separate communication on product features, content or discount offer. This lead to too many creatives being on air (e.g. April 2014: 6 parallel motifs). SAM not only could prove that an actual entertainment communication including all those details would lead to higher sales figures, but having multi-messages within one creative led to a decrease of parallel motifs (3 in December) and thus higher recall. It actually turned out to be so successful that Sky aligned the price and product strategy as well to enforce the impact of the new communication – and it did so very successfully, which is all the more impressive considering the highly competitive environment and important sales seasons like X-Mas.

The results are astonishing – the campaign had much better metrics than in the past (better ad recall in terms of movies and price offer than in the last 2 years; all relevant campaign dimensions like Credibility, Likelihood To Subscribe or Relevance were above average). The impact on the brand Sky was highly successful – despite the launch of Netflix and increasing competitive investments, Sky managed to maintain its Brand Awareness and Relevant Set and keep the competition away (10% points to 2nd competitor). Consumers did not get lost in details of different offers, the buying intention keeps growing. This translated into record sales figures. Sky reached 4 million subscribers for the 1st time and ended up with 4.1 million subscribers by end of 2014 – 3 months earlier than expected. In 2014, 456k new subscribers were obtained, of which 214 k in Q4 alone – both a new record! At the same time, the churn rate reached its all-time low with 8.2%. The new creative truly changed the perception of Sky.

The Sky Attribution Modelling was key to re-work the creative approach and aligning changes in price, product and marketing strategy:

Instead of having separate creatives for Branding/ Entertainment and for Sales offer, a combination was created for the X-Mas campaign, as results have shown that previously there was no difference in effect. Thus, the number of superfluous parallel messages got reduced.

Different offers were shown within one motif INSTEAD of having many different motifs as too many inefficient and ineffective messages with different offers and creatives.

For the first time, a new product offer approach was introduced for Christmas – a fixed price per number of products (2 packages for 16.90 Euro, 3 for 24.90, etc.). It was demonstrated by showing all possible package combinations with the same fixed price. The consumer had to learn there will be no better offer “around the next corner”. Consumers were reluctant to commit, because usually a discounted offer including all packages was communicated at the end of each month (all-in offer). Instead of having all-in subscriptions, Sky now had the opportunity to upsell. Additionally, cross-sales potential could be activated, as non-seasonal content like Football (there is a Football season break during X-Mas) could additionally be advertised and the results show that the sales of Football packages has also increased.

As this was done for all motifs, a clear creative umbrella was visible – also a new effect.

Based on consumer insights made visible through SAM, it was possible to improve the creative to a level that provoked actual changes in consumer behavior. The proof is the successful subscription rate. The impact of the marketing & product strategy change was so strong that it has not been changed since – and the first months of 2015 already show a similar development.