The challenge:

Make Virgin Media the cable TV provider of choice for Christmas. While TiVo delivered best-in-class technology, the product launched in 2009 and needed to re-establish dialogue with a tech savvy audience, challenging the competitors spending significantly more on advertising.

The objectives:

Position TiVo as innovative, relevant and ‘the cable TV service of choice’ for the festive season. Create a positive impact on sales reigniting love for Virgin Media in a creative way.

The execution:

KipstR – tech that controls TV as you sleep.

PR ideated and created the concept, responding to research that indicated a societal problem of ‘sofa snoozing’ in the festive season, resulting in missed legendary TV moments. We recruited a pair of tech-savvy teens to create a prototype, delivering fresh technology to five year old TiVo. The launch was announced and sustained through a multifaceted PR campaign that launched to all media channels under embargo. This created a powerful ‘big bang’ of coverage, cutting through the festive clutter. A suite of assets included working prototypes created with 3D printers, a lifestyle film showing how the technology would work in practice for the average family and strong product photography.

The outcome:

The campaign exceeded the original KPI by 586%. KipstR became more than a pre-Christmas PR story, with over 100 pieces of coverage across 15 countries and over 5.5 million social media impressions over three weeks. Virgin Media had its best ever quarterly organic cable customer additions and record low levels of customer churn.

Two teenage entrepreneurs were recruited to build the prototype, providing relevant and engaging spokespeople that our audience would connect with.

We conducted a number of interviews securing features, resulting in a BBC news feature and inclusion on Discovery Channel.

The campaign was sold in to media under embargo to ensure standout in the crowded news agenda. This preserved the coverage quality & prompted a ‘snowball effect’ as the story hit global newswires.

Working 3D printed prototypes provided an additional opportunity with consumer tech media, delivering campaign authenticity and credibility.

The power of KipstR was demonstrated in a lifestyle film, appealing to national and lifestyle media sites. The festive video secured high level online coverage including Mail Online, Yahoo, AOL, MSN and Time.

Engaging social influencers with the PR activity through Twitter resulted in global sharing, retweeting and trending on page one of Reddit the day following the UK launch.

Output / Awareness

• 10,000+ Tweets

• Over 5.5 million target audience impressions on social media

• Total reach of 830,280,000

• Thousands of digital shares globally, trending on page 1 of Reddit

Knowledge / Consideration

• 110 pieces of coverage secured

• Coverage appeared in every UK national newspaper

• 5 pieces of broadcast coverage, including BBC Breakfast and The Wright Stuff

• Coverage secured in 15 countries, including Pan-European, Canada, Japan, Russia and China

• Key brand messaging included in 100% of coverage

• 19:1 positive: negative social media sentiment

Action / Business Impact

• 1,500 customers registered for KipstR consumer trials

• Uplift in pre-Christmas sales with Virgin Media experiencing its best ever quarterly organic cable customer additions and record low levels of customer churn

• PRV of £1.2m was delivered against a budget of £15k achieving an ROI of 80/1.