BEST NEWSBRAND CAMPAIGN: ITV Sport Tour De France cross platform partnership with The Guardian Executive Summary:

The sports broadcast landscape is competitive however with ITV’s diverse, live and free offering it demonstrates ITV understands what it’s like to be a fan - the coverage of Tour De France being one strong proof point. To build awareness of ITV Sports Tour De France coverage required quality context and quantifiable reach to active sports fans through multiple touch-points, dovetailing with succinct messaging, seamless onward journeys and efficiency of targeting. Therefore the Guardian was identified as the ideal partner for ITV Sport.

As a result of the campaign interaction was high, sentiment shifted and viewing exceeded YoY performance.

Background and objectives

ITV Sport footprint is largely associated only with football, however the quality and diversity of the range of Sport that ITV covers is impressive, very appealing and growing.

The imited awareness of the range of sport, as well as the quality of the coverage provided, is linked to the low awareness with the offering beyond ITV main channel – mainly on ITV4 but also on the digital platforms. A key business challenge was therefore to get more sports fans engaged with ITV4 and ITV online/mobile. Ultimately, ITV wanted to demonstrate that they really care about sport and have a wide range of coverage, as well as improving quality perceptions across the board.

Another challenge in the current sports landscape was competition:

• Sky offer a dedicated ‘world of sport’ but through a pay model. • BBC covers a range of sport (and is ‘free’ in the eyes of most), they have little

LIVE coverage. • BT are new and loud, shouting about core sports in a way that ITV budgets have

no chance in taking on or gaining any cut-through with in the paid media space.

With all the competitor noise over the summer the opportunity was identified to champion ITV’s exclusive, live & free, broadcast of Tour De France (TdF) through clear and bold communications targeted by audience, context and relevancy, with ABC1 Men (with an interest in watching sport on TV) being the main group to target to meet these business, marketing and communications objectives.

Insight and strategy

ABC1 male, sport loving audience: Fans really care about getting closer to the sport they love and are resentful of any barriers which get in the way, whether that be having to pay to see it, not being able to access live coverage, or simply not being aware of a destination for where they can consume content.

By getting fans to realize ITV understands what it’s like to be a fan we can build the connection between fans and the sport they love, in turn growing positive sentiment and perceptions around ITV Sport – lead by the coverage of TdF.

ITV Sport: where nothing comes between a fan and their passion.

Our audience are however by nature medium / light over all TV viewers and particularly light / medium viewers of ITV making it hard for ITV to reach them with frequency through their owned media channels (on-air promos, continuity, .com etc), highlighting the need to invest in additional communication to engage them.

Strength of quality, credible context and quantifiable incremental reach of our communications to the active fans was required, however dovetailing with succinct messaging and efficiency of value and targeting.

The plan

Through audience analysis, the requirement to announce ITV Sport as the sole broadcaster of the TdF and the need for a continuous digital presence through the entire TdF, the Guardian was identified as the ideal solus partner for ITV Sport.

The Guardian’s platform neutral trading model gave us access to their audience across a variety of touchpoints: guardian.co.uk, m.guardian, android, ipad browser, print and ipad edition, ensuring delivery of reach in the most cost efficient way, across different day parts and mindsets seamlessly directing consumers to platforms for viewing and catch-up (therefore removing any barriers between the fans and the sport they love). The mobile MPU delivered on Android was the first of its type in a marketing campaign.

In addition to digital targeting, the print activity was placed among TdF editorial as the contextual relevance ensured that our communications were served to readers that were interested and receptive.

Looking at competitor activity, concentrating efforts on TdF limited us from being outshouted as may have been the case with other sports (esp Football & Tennis), however due to the scale of competitor activity Mindshare & The Guardian adopted a positional guarantee strategy to ensure we delivered cut-through.

The Guardian campaign complimented all other marketing activity supporting the TdF coverage on ITV4 (live coverage and highlights) as formats delivered through digital platforms acted as an extended network to ITV owned channels delivering AV promotional content and driving directly to ITV Player, while the static creative executions added impact and a new layer of cut-through to the campaign which was extended to other print titles on day of launch and final day of the TdF.

Results

ITV4 had its highest ever Sunday all time and prime time shares on 21st July (final day of TdF). Froome claiming the yellow jersey peaked with 2.1m viewers. TdF Live (16:30-21:29) averaged 1.2m viewers and a 6.3% share on ITV4, up over 500k viewers YoY. This is the first time ever the live coverage has attracted over 1m viewers on ITV4!

Importantly the viewing profile was male focused (70%), with a higher share amongst 34-54s than 2012 highlighting the valuable new audience, aligned with the Guardian cross platform reader profile, that was brought in.

Across all Guardian platforms the campaign over delivered vs. the initial plan due to incremental display value and higher than predicted CTRs. Tracking of digital display showed strong traffic to ITV.com during key stages through all platforms, volume through desktop and high conversion through tablet. iPad app and browser activity delivered a CTR of 1% in some cases, illustrating how well the Guardian iPad platform performs for the TdF, ABC1 34-54 male audience.

KellerFay research highlighted the growth of Guardian GMG readers accounting for ITV conversation. This leads to the strong hypothesis that Guardian cross platform activity helped shift sentiment amongst readers - ABC1 25-44s (male focused).

Viewpoint

Due to the profile and strength both digital and print platforms delivered against our audience and the ability to reach various touch-points through out the day, the Guardian provided the perfect fit to meet both our business and marketing objectives. Our media & creative teams working closely to deliver best in class and first of type formats, which illustrated ITV Sports quality, range and leading positioning within the Sports broadcasting landscape. The performance delivered, exceeded exceptions and we anticipate working closely with the Guardian and it's cross platform offering in the future.

Paul Ridsdale, Head of Marketing ITV. Broadcast The ITV Sport campaign centered around their coverage of the Tour De France, perfectly tapped into a new and exciting way of reaching the Guardian audience, across all our platforms - putting the audience at the heart of the planning and strategy. The campaign was delivered across print, web, mobile and tablet, with a great level of understanding placed on the role of each platform within the schedule, with high impact creative delivering the right message, to the right people at the right time. This exciting and innovative approach to reaching the guardian audience around contextually relevant editorial, produced outstanding campaign results; the CTRs for each platform being between 50-70% above average. I believe this confirms the combination of the right audience and context, really does resonates with our readers and how they engage with brands.

Rob Smallwood, Head of Investment Guardian News and Media