Cycling campaign capitalises on soccer audience

by Marketing ON 17 June 2010

SBS launched a campaign for the 20th year of the Tour de France, leveraging high numbers over the opening weekend of the 2010 FIFA World Cup broadcast.

The campaign encourages SBS’s World Cup fans to stay up for the Tour de France in July. For instance, a series of three 30-second TVCs tell the story of a diamond heist gone wrong as the security guard, getaway driver and policemen involved were held up all night watching the Tour de France.

The campaign incorporates three TVCs, online advertising, mobile video, social media, search marketing, radio and a Tour de France YouTube channel. The TVCs premiered on Friday with the additional elements rolling out across SBS media platforms throughout the World Cup and into the Tour de France coverage.

SBS group marketing manager, Katherine Raskob, said: “This is an incredibly exciting campaign for SBS and our partner agency Razor/US. We’ve hit on an exciting storyline that audiences can have fun with, combined with real Tour footage that ignites excitement among SBS’s huge sporting audience.”

SBS will also invest in a search campaign to further boost interest in SBS’s official Tour de France website.

The 2010 campaign builds on SBS’s 2009 Tour de France campaign , which though a partnership with RaboPlus, introduced website features such as live streaming, blogs and the Fantasy Tour de France competition.

SBS and RaboPlus Tour de France victory

by Marketing ON 9 October 2009

Background

The Tour de France (TDF) coverage on SBS in 2009 promised to be the biggest ever, with new levels of audience engagement created by brand-new features on sbs.com.au including live streaming of every stage.

This represented an ideal opportunity for relevant brands to capitalise on an increasingly engaged target audience.

RaboPlus has an ongoing relationship with SBS television, and is particularly connected to the Tour via its parent company Rabobank, which has a team competing in the Tour. This represented a brilliant synergy between the broadcaster and the brand.

RaboPlus became a major SBS sponsor of the Tour 09 via a multiplatform package that delivered advertising spots across television and online, including clever new online activations offering impressive opportunities.

Among them was ownership of SBS’s first-ever Fantasy TDF game, a newly developed online game that allowed visitors to connect deeply with the Tour by creating their own virtual team racing in the Tour.

A dedicated microsite, www.sbs.com.au/tdf, was built for the Tour, consisting of a comprehensive range of on-demand highlights, data, maps, news and blogs.

Objective

Via the RaboPlus brand integration across the SBS TDF microsite, RaboPlus could communicate with an audience that repeatedly accessed the website, leveraging maximum value from their investment.

RaboPlus’s objectives specifically for SBS online were to:

Increase traffic to corporate and campaign sites during the TDF
Increase acquisition of new customers and prospects via campaign promotions and offers
Engage and interact with audiences via special content, and
Increase awareness of the RaboPlus brand.

“With cycling continuing to grow in appeal, the TDF provides a great opportunity for RaboPlus to extend Rabobank’s association with the sport of cycling and strengthen the relationship between our brand and its stakeholders,” said Greg McAweeney, general manager of RaboPlus.

Strategy

The online component of the RaboPlus sponsorship package was to focus around interactivity with audiences, allowing RaboPlus to deliver via the SBS website relevant and detailed TDF data to information seekers.

SBS’s RaboPlus sponsored site included interactive content:

Daily updated standings board where interested audiences could visit for updated competition details
Interactive stand-alone site where audiences could check route riders, team information, past winners and stage maps
Blogs page with regular expert updates, and
World first Fantasy TDF competition

Fantasy TDF was to place participants in the position of team director, choosing the best riders from the real life Tour to score points for their team and get to the winning post first. Players’ team picks were rated on the real-life cyclist’s actual performances at each stage of the Tour proper. SBS commentator Mike Tomalaris entered a team, effectively meaning Fantasy Tour participants were competing against one of SBS’s experts.

Fantasy TDF served as the platform for RaboPlus’s target audience, the ‘alpha performers’, to demonstrate their knowledge of the event. It delivered RaboPlus branding to the highly engaged participants, spending an average of 8.5 minutes at a time on the game.

Execution

In June and July SBS drove viewers to register for the first ever Fantasy Tour via a five-second Fantasy on-air promo spot as the first activity for RaboPlus during the campaign.

Then to maintain engagement during the Tour SBS used social media, online pointers and two separate electronic direct mail (eDM) campaigns to target the TDF audience (Fantasy Tour and the SBS cycling microsite database).

RaboPlus also targeted its own customers to draw them back to the SBS campaign online.

The company engaged its existing opt-in database of customers and prospects via eDMs promoting the SBS RaboPlus Fantasy TDF, special RaboPlus Tour related offers and content on the RaboPlus website.

RaboPlus commissioned exclusive video and article content from the Rabobank team in Europe, which was also syndicated across SBS online.

Results

SBS’s TDF site broke all previous usage records. User sessions on the TDF site rose 68% on 2008, while page impressions more than doubled, from 2.5 million to 5.4 million.

SBS Online delivered 246,000 live TDF video streams at an average duration of 26 minutes each. Video views totalled 1.6 million, up 45% on 2008, delivering RaboPlus unparalleled reach to SBS’s huge online audiences.

The ‘Fantasy’ team competition itself attracted over 10,855 registrations and 690,000 page impressions over its almost four-week duration. It delivered a database of over 1300 opt-ins to RaboPlus that could be used for marketing purposes in future.

RaboPlus achieved an increased acquisition of new customers and prospects during the TDF promotion period.

While brand research is not yet available, anecdotal evidence supports the achievement of RaboPlus’s objective to increase brand awareness and the brand’s association with cycling.

“With each event and user interaction we learn more about how viewers want to access our content, and we continue to apply these insights to build an even better experience across all SBS platforms,” said Marshall Heald, head of online at SBS.

SBS Online registers traffic record

by Marketing ON 4 August 2009

On the back of its coverage of the 2009 Tour de France and the Ashes Cricket tours, SBS Online announced that it recorded its busiest month ever.

SBS.com.au, user sessions jumped 44 percent compared to the same month a year ago, with video views hit 3.1 million – up 51 percent on July 2008.

SBS head of sport Ken Shipp said:

“These results demonstrate SBS’s skill in managing our premium sports properties to enhance viewers’ enjoyment and keep our audience engaged – both during and outside of telecast times.”

User sessions on the Tour site rose 68 percent on 2008, while page impressions more than doubled, from 2.5 million to 5.4 million.

SBS Online delivered 246,000 live Tour de France video streams at an average duration of 26 minutes each. Video views (both of the live stream and downloaded on demand) totalled 1.6 million, up 45 percent on last year.

Up to and including day four of the Third Test, SBS’s Ashes website had attracted 453,000 page impressions and 119,000 video views.

Renault gets on Tour with SBS

by Marketing ON 17 February 2009

SBS has been well known for its support for the Tour de France for a long time.

The media outlet has now announced that Renault is the first of its 2009 sponsors for the cycling event. The sponsorship deal will span television and online and the French car company will feature its Koleos SUV throughout the tour telecast.

Also as a part of the deal, Renault will ‘own’ the Taste le Tour segments, hosted by French celebrity chef Gabriel Gate.

Renault Australia Managing Director, Rudi Koenig, asserts that the sponsorship reflected Renault’s deep association with French culture, its pursuit of excellence and the quality of SBS’s Tour de France coverage.

“Renault has a longstanding relationship with SBS and the Tour de France. This iconic event is absolutely aligned with our brand values and our target market, and we look forward to leveraging our association across SBS’s on-air and online platforms,” says Koeing.

The Tour has been a ratings winner for SBS in the past – 6.8 million Australians watched SBS’s coverage of the 2008 event.

This year, the Tour will be featured most comprehensively via SBS’s website, according to SBS director of commercial affairs, Richard Finlayson, with additional updates and live streaming of the events as they occur.