The Unquiet Film series is branded content created to inspire existing and potential subscribers to the Times and Sunday Times digital package with unique stories from the paper’s past and present that demonstrates its values.

We needed as many people as possible to see the films but coming from a media owner, it was going to be difficult to get coverage from rivals.

To get around this issue, we targeted media, marketing and creative trade press, as well as media commentators on the nationals - all journalists we knew weren't anti News UK. The trades served a dual purpose – they cover both the advertising and publishing industries and are opinion formers. We phased the release of the 13 films to maintain traction over the course of a year, tying into real-time news events where possible and build the reputation of the brands.

We achieved 300m media impressions, including widespread coverage across all trade press over 12 months. Extraordinarily, rival national newspapers celebrated the quality journalism, story telling and the initiative as a whole from the Times and Sunday Times. People who visited the site and viewed a film were 9x more likely to take out a Membership than people who didn't view one. Those who saw 2+ films have 5x uplift vs. those who saw just 1. Viewers were also 13% more likely to say that the Times and Sunday Times were brands they were ‘happy to be seen with’.

Unquiet Films were supported in multiple channels. Owned social channels encouraged sharing from our existing audience. Sponsored Facebook and Twitter posts drove sharing and paid video seeding drove views. Paid search ‘mopped-up’ potential viewers looking for our content. Our broadcast activity came to life through media partnerships with Channel 4 and Picturehouse cinemas, focusing on long-form content, including a 3’30” takeover break in Homeland and 5 minute content slots at premium cinema screenings.

This combination of media drove social mentions from our audience. The films even picked-up earned coverage in competitor papers such as The Guardian and The Independent.

As of February 2015 there were 5.8m 30” preroll views of Unquiet content and 306k YouTube views of the films. There were over 300m P.R. impressions and a social reach of 1.07m during the Homeland takeover. The content resonated. 45% of viewers planned on watching more films and viewers were 13% more likely to be ‘happy to be seen with’ The Times.

Viewers were also more likely to take out a subscription. Visitors who viewed a film were 9x more likely to do this than visitors who didn’t. There was a 5x uplift if you saw more than two films.