At its core the Cable Effects campaign is a direct response marketing campaign. Direct response marketing by definition is straightforward and direct to get an immediate response from consumers. It is not typically thought of as being especially creative.

However the Cable Effects campaign has proven otherwise with its highly creative, 12 Cannes Lion wins over the past three years. The Cable Effects campaign wasn’t just award-winning for the industry; it had become a part of American pop culture, a constant topic of cultural conversation – 2.9 million YouTube views and counting.

Despite the initial success of the campaign, the competitive landscape was intensifying and DIRECTV needed to refresh its efforts for Q1 2014. The assignment was to make DIRECTV’s long running brand superiority Cable Effects TV campaign more effective at driving consumers to leave Cable and upgrade to DIRECTV than any promotional price based campaign.

The strategy was to ignite people’s latent hatred of Cable TV in a way that made DIRECTV the memorable and obvious solution - driving them to upgrade by calling 1-800-DIRECTV. After all, it’s not offers that make people leave Cable, it’s Cable that makes people leave Cable.

The campaign challenged existing promotional campaign norms with a brand superiority campaign that poked at consumer’s frustrations with Cable during critical moments. The better experience of DIRECTV became the key offer rather than a price promotion.

The infamous Cable Effects campaign proved that a brand superiority approach could be more successful in the face of highly discounted promotional offers from the competition. Standing for something beyond price and the convenience of “triple play” bundled offers was more effective because it made DIRECTV stand for something vs. becoming commoditized.

As a result, without any price cut or new offer, sales +17.9% Year Over Year (YOY), an additional $300 Million in revenue was generated, call volume to 1-800-DIRECTV +21.7% YOY and new subscribers +18.8% YOY. Best of all, 80% of all new subscribers brought in during this time period, were former Cable subscribers. Proof positive of the campaign’s ability to steal Cable’s market share.

Typically branding campaigns are not considered significant drivers of business because they focus more on promoting high-level brand attributes vs. hard-hitting sales messages. Cable Effects has proven otherwise and is proof that when done right, brand campaigns are not just as effective as price promotional campaigns, they’re more effective.