A disruptive idea, content worth watching, executed at scale with a disruptive media model.

The offer (15% bonus) was bland…it needed reframing. We took the ‘pot-of-points’ used to fund the bonus and made it the centre of our thinking–a billion point giveaway.

Meet Tim, the intern who ‘accidentally’ sent an email to 7.5M members offering a slice of a billion (instead of million) Points if they moved their reward points to Velocity.

The more points people moved across, the bigger their share of the billion Points. The consequences unfolded in branded content 40-part, Netflix-style mini-series.

The idea had scale, a relatable story to tell and smart way to tell it.

Our proprietary ethnographic research tool, Black Mirror, garnered further insights into our target audience by understanding existing behaviours and barriers.

Six focus groups allowed us to probe further as we tested messaging, improvements to the transfer experience, and creative propositions.

To maintain month-long content engagement we sequenced media based on in-market behaviour. Leading with our ‘Dramatise’ creative (disrupt), then ‘Contextual’ assets (making Velocity Points tangible), and finally our ‘Commercialise’ activity (convert). Where a user was brought into the journey was dependent on how familiar they were with the Velocity brand and content they had already seen.

This campaign ran across media channels that could ingest Velocity’s first party data, namely Facebook, programmatic, SEM and eDMs. The video-led story was reinforced with dynamic display banners, eDMs, social posts and in-airport collateral. Towards the end of the campaign we ran a homepage buyout to create a sense of urgency and to extend reach. It worked, with daily transfers up 40%.

Engaged users were driven to a personalised microsite containing a purpose-built points calculator to show users where they could fly with their points. These inputs made retargeting more personalised and effective.

Results are only relatable when compared with ‘like for like’ comparisons.

So, the following has been compared to the best performing previous campaign (November 2016) which had the same offer (15% bonus) but significantly higher media spend.

The headline: the biggest revenue month in Velocity’s history, achieved with 35% less media budget.

· 58.4% increase in revenue (target was 40%)

· 80% increase in new transferees (target was 25%).

· The average points transfer of these new-transferees was 27% higher.

· The overall uplift in points transferred was 34%.

Every marketing dollar Velocity spent during May, generated $6.60 return on marketing investment (ROMI).

And our big mistake - The Billion Point Giveaway branded content mini-series - was viewed over 7,333,290 times.

From a business change perspective, the impact was also significant. The results seen from this campaign has redefined Velocity’s ‘go to market’ approach for subsequent activity.

A big mistake, in an email to 7.5million Australians sparked a 40 part mini-series that gave each viewer unique messages, film sequences and reasons to act.

So with media becoming increasingly fragmented how did we deliver our branded content at scale?

We developed a data-led media model that tracked our audiences behaviour regardless of where they were (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and digital display), what they had interacted with and knew what content piece to serve you next for the best chance of conversion.

This approach ensured our users were told a engaging story, rather than feeling sold to.

Members were profiled and organised in the Data Management Platform based on known behaviour and engagement attributes. Nine addressable cohorts were developed (including look-a-likes for non-members), to execute our ‘addressability at scale’ strategy, delivering our branded content to the right audiences based on what they had previously seen and where.

To deliver the greatest ROI for Velocity, our goal was to only leverage paid channels where owned channels failed to convert. This meant our approach was less about where we could reach our audience, but more so where we couldn’t.

After interrogating the member base, we knew the regular transferee required, on average, three emails to reach their inbox before taking action, however our data models suggested the real opportunity lay with first time transferees.

To influence people to convert for the first time, we needed to steal attention and engage users through story-telling.

Situation:

Velocity is the loyalty program of Virgin Australia.

The main way it makes money is when Australians transfer credit card reward points into Velocity Points. A tough sell and even a tougher story to communicate when members have to login to their bank account and select ‘Velocity’ to transfer.

Velocity run a 15% bonus promotion to create a spike in transfers. The last four campaigns (May 15, Nov 15, May 16, Nov 16) had seen modest growth despite significantly increased investment.

In addition, research told us our biggest barrier was that people didn’t trust Velocity was the best place for their hard-earned credit card points.

Brief:

Overcome the trust barrier get more people transferring more points than ever before.

Objectives:

Increase revenue from November 2016 by 40%.

Increase the number of new members transferring from Nov-2016 by 25%.

Deliver greater efficiencies with 35% less media budget than November 2016.