As the spearhead of a digital-first brand transformation, TV entertainment titan Fox Networks Group skipped traditional channels and heavily leveraged YouTube to promote its Fox Movies rebrand.
GOALS
Maximize brand awareness for Fox Movies
Drive brand favorability for Fox Movies
APPROACH
Ran in-stream videos to targeted audience segments to build anticipation for Fox Movies rebrand and grow awareness
Served mastheads to mass audiences in five markets to promote the new Fox Movies
Remarketed with call-to-action video
Ran six-second bumper ads to maximize reach
Used Brand Lift surveys to measure success
RESULTS
40% view-through rates of 25-second in-stream ads (compared to industry standard of 23%)
92% video completion rate of one-minute ads
19% lift in brand favorability
Over the past 20 years, Fox Networks Group Asia (FNG) has been a major player in Asia Pacific. FNG is one of the most established TV networks in the world and has enjoyed high brand awareness; but increased competition is challenging the status quo in the entertainment industry. Players across the market are evolving how consumers find and watch entertainment, and Fox Networks Asia wanted to establish itself as a leader in the digital revolution.
FNG launches rebranding campaign on YouTube
The first step was a full rebrand of Fox Movies Premium, pivoting to become simply Fox Movies: the new home for FNG’s most popular and critically acclaimed films. The goal of the rebrand was for viewers to associate Hollywood films with Fox Movies. FNG had a great product—and now just needed to tell its story in the places where consumers spend their time.
FNG chose YouTube as the platform to spread the word about the big change across the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Indonesia. YouTube made sense for the campaign because viewers are spending more and more time on the platform—particularly with entertainment content. Among the general population, 76% watch entertainment and pop culture video content at least once per month.1
FNG bet that even as people’s attention fragments and consumers watch video across numerous devices, high-quality branded content on a platform where people are paying attention works.
Casting a targeted net with sequential messaging
The campaign kicked off with 25-second TrueView ads targeting affinity groupslike movie lovers. The cool thing for this campaign was that FNG could take advantage of targeting that uses aggregated data of what people are searching for on Google Search and Maps to strengthen YouTube targeting, engaging the right audience at the right time throughout the day. These signals are updated with every impression, ensuring that FNG can connect with the most relevant audience every time.
The next step was one-minute trailers, again targeted to movie lovers and movie-related keywords. Completion rates for ads like the ones below were as high as 92%, with viewers watching, on average, a whopping 55 seconds of the 60-second videos.
At the same time, FNG remarketed to people who had seen the previous ads with specific call-to-action videos to encourage viewers to visit specific shopping malls in the respective markets, cultivating deeper offline interactions.
Just before a new title was released, FNG reached wide audiences and drove awareness across five markets with mastheads on the day of or day before the new title release to remind viewers to tune in for local showtimes. Six-second bumper ads like this one helped the brand to maximize reach.
The TrueView trailers scored high view-through rates of 40% (compared to the industry benchmark of 23%) and reached a one-quarter to one-third of each country’s internet population. Bumper ads in particular netted a 23% incremental reach with movie lovers.
Connecting with attentive audiences on YouTube
FNG attributes a lot of its first major digital campaign’s success to getting in front of attentive audiences. “In an oversaturated media world, it’s not reach but attention that is scarce,” said Simon Lam, Digital Marketing Manager at Fox Networks Group.
“With a combination of content and distribution strategy on YouTube, we’re able to reach our target audience with maximum attention.”
-Simon Lam, Digital Marketing Manager, Fox Networks Group
FNG measured and optimized key metrics of the campaign using Google’s Brand Lift surveys, which assess consumer reactions and brand favorability. Typically, a large, established brand such as FNG is unlikely to move the needle dramatically in terms of awareness. Remarkably, however, FNG saw a 19% lift in brand favorability in Hong Kong.
The big bet on digital for one of the region’s most traditional brands paid off.
“Our journey of digital transformation stems from creating better experiences for our customers. We have seen tremendous success come out of this partnership,” concluded Lucien Harrington, SVP, Asia Pacific and Middle East, Fox Networks Group.
