General information
Sector: D2C
Media: Radio, social media, online
Time period: 2021
Case description
In the height of the pandemic, with all parties and in-person celebrations cancelled, e-cards were more popular than ever. In a heavily saturated market thortful.com needed to stand out. As a challenger brand to the established players, thortful wanted to quickly grow share ahead of one of the industry’s most crucial retail times – Valentine’s Day. But Bauer was faced with an obstacle – thortful were brand new to radio having never even ran an airtime ad, let alone a multiplatform sponsorship. Bauer overcame this with assurances of their expertise and an idea so ambitious, it beat all their competitor’s pitches.
The challenge
- Increase Brand Awareness in a creative way, making thortful.com famous for being a fun brand.
- Increase Brand Affinity – hero thortful’s card creators and promote their community messaging.
The insight
thortful were looking to target all adults – a challenge in itself, but Bauer’s diverse radio portfolio was the perfect solution. Research showed that radio was Europe’s most trusted medium, at 57%. With listeners having assurance in their favourite presenter, Bauer shaped their proposition around their audiences’ love for their on-air talent. THE IDEA To get everyone talking about thortful ahead of the big day, Bauer challenged their presenters to create the best Valentine’s card of the year. Utilising Bauer’s biggest brands and flagship shows across Absolute Radio, KISS and Magic Radio, over a 3 week editorially led story-arc, presenters were teamed up with thortful card creators to produce their own cards. In the battle of all battles, on each station the breakfast show hosts were pitted against the drive-time presenters, going head-to head in a fierce competition to win the hearts of the listeners and the most votes for their creations.
Execution
In Bauer’s boldest promotion to date – in just 3 weeks the campaign saw 3 editorial story arcs across 3 stations. Campaign moments were purposely extraordinary and deeply engrained into the fabric of the editorial, to create a buzz on socials and make thortful famous.
On air
The heart of the campaign was a multi daypart story arc, featuring Bauer’s flagship talent, within the Breakfast and Drivetime shows across all 3 stations. This was supported by live reads and presenter-voiced trails across the schedule; alongside live in-show editorial across each of the competing shows.
Online
Bauer created bespoke pages on each station’s website for the full duration of the campaign. With exclusive home page take-overs across KISS and Magic Radio. Listeners were driven here to vote for their favourite card, for the chance to win! Pages included key messaging, imagery and click-through links to thortful.com. Users were encouraged to purchase the competing cards or pick from thortful’s huge range – with a portion of sales donated to Bauer’s charity Cash for Kids.
On socials
Social campaigns ran across all three brands. It also saw additional organic posts from Bauer’s talent on their own social channels – from Joel Corey on Instagram to Ritchie on Twitter. The campaign was supported by app interstitials and digital audio.
Campaign results
16% increase in brand awareness 10% of listeners bought something from thortful.com 50% of listeners took some form of action, with 1/3 visiting thortful.com 187% over delivery on the on-air campaign.
