B L U E 4 4 9 & D I X O N S C A R P H O N E

G R O U P – B L A C K F R I D A Y

B E S T T O P I C A L C A M P A I G N

1

B E S T T O P I C A L C A M P A I G N

B L U E 4 4 9 & D I X O N S C A R P H O N E G R O U P – B L A C K F R I D A Y

E X E C U T I V E S U M M A R Y

Black Friday has gone nuts. It’s a retail phenomenon that has come to dominate the run up to Christmas. Activity is feverish. The public both expects and yet has become increasingly immune to the relentless pummelling they receive about Black Friday in their inboxes, on their screens and through their Newsbrands.

Winning the fight for attention came down to some good old fashioned dominance. Dominance that only Newsbrands can deliver: in the moment, on topic, right now. Sometimes cunning isn’t enough. Sometimes subtle massaging of the audience’s sensibility will be lost. Sometimes you need to shout from the rooftops and give your message the booming bass that it needs.

Currys PC World dominated the biggest media brands over the Black Friday period to emerge victorious, outperforming the competition and really driving incremental sales!

2

B L U E 4 4 9 & D I X O N S C A R P H O N E G R O U P – B L A C K F R I D A Y

B E S T T O P I C A L C A M P A I G N

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE:

Black Friday has become one of the busiest retail days of the year. It originated in the US but in the past few years it has increased in popularity this side of the Atlantic. Traditionally falling on the last Friday in November, Black Friday has come to mark the beginning of the Christmas shopping period.

There was evidence that the Black Friday phenomenon was in major UK growth. Experian’s Hitwise platform monitored visits to a wide range of major retailers and saw a 19% increase year-on-year in visits to retail websites in 2013 compared to Black Friday 2012.

Currys PC World was keen to capitalise on this growing retail trend. With an already successful Cyber Monday (traditionally the last Monday you can order products online) they wanted to create a huge event – The Black Tag event. It would run from Black Friday (28 th Nov) – Cyber Monday (1st December).

Their business objective was to drive a significant sales spike and marketing were tasked with growing their share of market over this period.

INS IGHT

There were a number of challenges to overcome.

The market would be at fever pitch, spending heavily, so we needed to maintain dominant share of voice vs the competition.

Messaging across the market would be virtually identical with ‘Black Friday Sale now on’ being shouted from the roof tops! Creating standout through media planning was vital.

Specific product deals were top secret so we couldn’t show our hand too early but we would need a large canvas to show the breath and scale of deals once Black Friday was live

Currys PC World is a mass market retailer so our target audience was vast.

Would Black Friday simply pull forward sales that would have happened anyway – the sales must be truly incremental to count

We needed to create a mass media roadblock to standout.

Several specific newsbrand insights stood out for us:

1. Lumen eye tracking research had shown that average dwell time for electrical retailers in newsprint is between 2 – 3seconds. This would not be enough to show a wider range of market leading deals or cut through the ‘Black Friday now on’ clutter.

3

2. The combination of multiplatform newsbrands when used together with TV can increase the depth of information received by 41% vs TV alone.

3. 86% of adults believe that newspapers have ‘power and influence’ over their readers and this influence is key to purchase consideration during the biggest retail day of the year.

Gaining additional attention and creating a ‘canvas’ within newsprint to place us front of mind would be critical in a cluttered and competitive environment.

PLAN – THE ROADBLOCK

The role for media across all channels was to deliver scale, disruption and dominance across the Black Friday week using channels that have historically delivered strong sales results & a positive ROI.

The ambition was to dominate the largest national newspaper, the largest commercial TV programme and the largest video site. All of this would be supported by heavy weights of radio, digital and large format outdoor.

This would be delivered to craft a three phase campaign….

T E A S E : Communications needed to whip up excitement without revealing the Black Friday deals.

A N N O U N C E : Grab attention and drive a dramatic short term sales response

S U S T A I N : Ensure momentum until Cyber Monday across the rest of the weekend dubbed ‘The Black Tag Event’.

T E A S E :

-­‐ A heavy weighted TV laydown was key across all three campaign phases, including domination of the ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here’ ad breaks on Thursday evening. Across the Black Friday week the campaign reached 22m ABC1 Adults @ 6 OTS

-­‐ We used radio to tease our audience using 10” creative to build momentum during key day-parts across key national stations, reaching 6m ABC1 Adults across one day

A N N O U N C E & S U S T A I N :

• Newsbrands would provide the cornerstone of the Announce and Sustain phases o Strong presence across all key sectors o Takeover of the nation’s favourite newspaper, the Sun o Reaching 45% of ABC1 Ads 2.5 times over a 3 day period

• Radio bolstered the reach of key Black Friday deals across the Announce and Sustain phases,

with a longer 30” to communicate more offer-led messaging and drive in-store. Across a 4 day period, this element reached 7.8m ABC1 Ads

4

• A You Tube takeover, combined with HPTOs with InSkin and high impact formats on Facebook ensured digital activity achieved broadcast scale on Black Friday, reaching 14m unique users at a frequency of 3.

• A handpicked selection of Iconic London OOH sites & national malls echoed the press takeover

to provide a disruptive & dominant presence on Black Friday and across the weekend, delivering 3.1m ABC1 Adult impacts

RESULTS

As predicted Black Friday was an enormous success. An estimated £810m was spent online by British shoppers on Friday, according to internet retail experts IMRG.

Currys PC World echoed this success with their largest sales day on record – ever. This was a phenomenal result. This growth was larger than the market average across the Electrical Household Appliances and Audio and Vision Equipment categories.

Our newsbrand strategy was a major contributor to this success. Our Black Friday takeover of The Sun delivered very high attention and recall (74% prompted, 57% spontaneous) according to Lumen Research and 26% of readers spent more than 10 seconds reading our ads. This compared very favourably with our competitors print presence which came in at an average 63% prompted, 46% spontaneous.

CLIENT V IEW

“Black Friday was our most successful shopping day on record. The Black Friday media strategy delivered by Blue 449 was fundamental to our success. Newsbrands allowed us to harness attention on the morning of Black Friday and drive a mass short term sales effect. The innovative Sun takeover really packed a commercial punch and we are looking to expand this strategy YOY. Newsbrands continue have a growing importance to Currys PC World and we plan to deliver an even stronger Black Friday in 2015. “

Ian McGregor – Currys PC World Marketing Director.