Priority, O2’s super-charged loyalty scheme, is what makes O2 stand apart from its competitors. Offering customers a range of goodies including £1 lunches, money-can’t buy experiences and exclusive 48 hour access to gig tickets has led to 7 million people signing up for the Priority app.
Channel 4 offers O2 Customers priority access to its best content
The Big Idea
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Keeping the proposition fresh is key to growing users and reducing churn, so the challenge was to make a step-change in the offers to keep them on the Priority app for longer and drive more habitual use – and we thought that exclusive TV content was the silver bullet, with C4 connecting most deeply with their core target audience.
With Channel 4’s direct relationship with over 12m registered viewers, we had previously offered TV premieres as a marketing initiative to create buzz, but the idea of premiering content exclusively to a brands’ customers had previously been put in the ‘too difficult’ box, due to our contracts with indies and compliance hurdles.
However, with O2’s 48hr pre-sale mechanic for tickets already established, the idea seemed a natural fit, and given plenty of time by the client and the agency to work through the complexity, the launch of our new digital platform ‘All 4’ offered the opportunity.
We invited O2 to become our first ever launch partner of our entire digital estate and in doing so we created the opportunity to become the first brand to offer their customers exclusive 48hr premiere access to the entire catalogue of their favourite C4 shows such as Made in Chelsea, Gadget Man, Fresh Meat, Peep Show and many more, all on through one click on the Priority app!
Making it Happen
This project required us to build a bespoke VoD delivery system from scratch in less than 8wks to hit the start of the new series of Made In Chelsea. We also created a unique code generator to prevent the codes from going viral, requiring close technical collaboration between O2 and C4 technology teams.
Elsewhere, discussions with 12 independent production companies took place before agreements were made with 6, representing 10 series. With some shows being delivered as late as a few hours before transmission, it meant we needed to change the entire production and commissioning process to ensure each of the 70 episodes were delivered and transcoded in time for the 48 hour premiere, which then needed to be uploaded and promoted by O2 onto the Priority app.
Working with VCCP and both our marketing teams, promotional support was planned through large scale co-branded VOD, Display, TV and Twitter activity. In order to deliver the partnership we were required to collaborate more deeply with client and agency than for any previous commercial project!
The Results
Audience research has shown how much O2 customers value the content that the partnership delivers, with 69% regarding the offer as a genuine treat and 44% intending to watch shows via Priority in the future. Importantly, this has translated into business results. So far we’ve seen over 62,000 users tune in to watch their favourite shows 48 hours early – that’s the equivalent of filling the O2 arena over three times!
Our initial target for the end of the year was 100,000 meaning that only 30% of the way through the campaign we had already hit over 60% of our target. The churn benefit of upgrading Priority customers to heavy users will be worth an estimated £48m by the end of 2015.
