The Open University had three main challenges they wanted addressing. The first was to create an emotional brand piece that addressed their key enquiry barriers and explained who The Open University are. The second, was they wanted to drive brand health to maintain or increase their ‘Likelihood to Enquire’ targets. And finally, they wanted to deliver on new student enquiries that would aid to fulfil The Open University’s student recruitment targets, and Sky had just the answer.
The Open University segment their audience based on their motivations and needs. Therefore, the various Sky and Channel 5 channels offered an opportunity to create different messages, and appeal to different audiences, whilst offering a premium endorsement and thematic story relevant to the channel.
We would have each of the seven 30-second adverts tell the story of an OU student that was thematically or target–audience aligned to a respective Sky channel. We could then expand this reach by positioning these adverts in Demand across equally relevant content to each OU student’s themed story.
The partnership spanned four Sky channels, both in linear and On Demand, as well as Channel 5. Havas Media’s in-house Content and Partnership Team, JUMP, worked with The Open University and Sky to produce bespoke adverts from existing OU footage. These were all introduced by a bespoke branded introduction, Sky Presents, from the channel they were specifically created for.
Each of the 7 x 30” adverts tell the story of an OU student, which is thematically or target–audience aligned to the channel. For example, Alex’s story on Sky Sports explains how he had wanted to become a professional footballer, but after an injury he had to rethink his options; thankfully The Open University offered him a new career path through studying.
The TV campaigns were aligned to the relevant channel programming in On Demand platforms. Longer films of each of the student’s stories were also available for Sky viewers to watch by clicking the red button when the adverts appeared in linear airtime. The campaign was further supported with digital display creative and native editorial articles hosted across Sky Sports and News as well as social posts throughout the campaign.
Carling In Off The Bar
