Targeting younger audiences to encourage voting
The Electoral Commission & Hollyoaks
The Big Idea
Hollyoaks speaks to young people on their level, in their language as a peer, not a Government department. It helps viewers through life issues, makes them laugh and cry, but always keeps them engaged. Not only does Hollyoaks reach almost 1m 16-24’s each week, it is also the most-watched programme on All 4, which has over 50% of the entire 16-24 population as registered users. The show’s heritage and recognisable cast, coupled with the fact that it is one of the most socially engaged shows on TV meant it was the obvious choice.
Harnessing the influence of Hollyoaks and the personalised impact of All4, we created a bespoke content-led ad campaign using talent, shot on set and scripted by the writers of the show itself. It felt natural and seamless and featured Jennifer Metcalfe, Amanda Clapham, Jazmine Franks and Duayne Boachie discussing the need to register to vote. Our All4 iVoD format, Ad4You, enabled us to use geo-location technology and a dynamic countdown to personalise the messaging for our 13M registered users. The campaign was amplified with a detailed schedule of support by talent; in person, in press and across digital and social media.
Making it Happen
We enlisted the full support of the producers, Lime Pictures, who truly believed in what we wanted to achieve. We wove the campaign through the fabric of Hollyoaks and leveraged every additional touchpoint including cast images, backstage videos, tweets, Facebook posts and press coverage including interviews for the NUS and Operation Black Vote to further engage young and BAME would-be-voters.
On 21st March, we launched first in break in Hollyoaks to grab attention with the Hollyoaks audience and take advantage of the natural behaviour-change mindset of Mondays. We then dominated Hollyoaks across both Channel 4 and E4, whilst also optimising the rest of the airtime on E4, the top converting channel for 16-34 Adults. Using our first party data and our ad innovations we were able to target the right message, to the right person, at the right time, a powerful combination of creativity and programmatic. We created a dynamic countdown Ad4You – the interactive unit included a dynamic overlay which counted down to the deadline for voter registration for the local election, using geo-location technology, and a click it also linked out to the Electoral Commission register to vote website.
The Results
The campaign reached 3.1M (21%) of 16- 34s and elicited an immediate response from the viewers. The number of people using the registration website more than doubled, from 460 in the minute prior to the launch, to 1100 immediately after the ad aired (up 139%). The first spot generated the highest number of daily registrations in a month.
The correlation between the ad airing on C4 and an increase in people using the site to register continued throughout the campaign. There was an average of 5,973 more registrations per day when the campaign was on air. Over on All4, the story was equally as strong with higher than average awareness and view through rates and more than double our average engagement rate. We successfully communicated complex information about a number of different elections across the country with no wastage, showing the power of personalisation on All4. The extensive social media support from Hollyoaks and the cast captured the attention of the viewers, engaging the audience and creating a two way dialogue. Tweets featuring the Hollyoaks videos and images that linked to the registration site were seen by over 2 million Twitter users. The overwhelmingly positive press reaction to the campaign generated press coverage valued at £160k. The core objective of this campaign which was to encourage as many young people as possible to register to vote and in total there were a million applications during the campaign, of which 56% were under 35.
