Awarding brands and agencies that are using YouTube to deliver highly effective campaigns
How can you tell a great story, spark emotion, create community, make a movement, build a brand, deliver results and demonstrate measurable ROI? Our judges of the YouTube Works for Brands programme examined over 50 entries, and we’re delighted to announce the winners for 2017.
These best-in-class case studies show how saavy marketers are using data to inform their content strategies on YouTube, delight their consumers, and in return, deliver real business results for their brands.
“One of the great things about the [YouTube Works for Brands] awards, was the diversity of solutions we saw. There is no ‘one way’ to use YouTube.”
– Craig Mawdsley (Chair of Judges), Joint CSO, AMV BBDO
Grand Prix Winner and Best Cultural Impact
Mattessons aimed to “become to gaming what popcorn is to film”. Targeting after school snackers, for 3 years the brand has leveraged the YouTube gaming community to create deeply immersive & effective campaigns. Revenue ROI was 2.1x higher than category norms, and profit ROI was 2.9x higher than category norms.
“A few YouTube gamers and millions of fans later and we became the biggest name in meat snacking!”
Grand Prix Winner and Best Use of Data
To grow awareness of their offering, BT Sport gave away the UEFA Champions League Final for free, on YouTube. Combined with a clever use of re-targeting using 30+ pieces of original content, they reduced CPAs by over 60%. The campaign delivered a ROMI of 170%, brand familiarity up 43%, and consideration up 22% YOY.
“We counterintuitively gave away our most premium event of the season for free to the whole of the UK.”
Best Breakthrough Advertiser
Sarson’s needed to attract a younger audience in the face of a slowing market. By creating YouTube pickling tutorials, Sarson’s saw inbound website traffic grow 541% in 2016 vs 2015, transforming Sarson’s digital and search presence all-year round with a key target audience.
“We repositioned the brand from an ingredient that you sprinkle on something, to something that forms a major part of a recipe.”
Best Integration
From an animated musical to a WWI battleground truce, Sainsbury’s Christmas campaigns have used YouTube to embed themselves at the heart of UK popular culture. YouTube paid back to the brand in spades. In 2014 Sainsbury’s saw a VoD ROI of £236 per each £1 spent, and YouTube is credited with playing a pivotal role in the 30% increase in transactions the week before Christmas generated over the four campaigns.
“We became the most viewed Christmas ad in the UK whilst maintaining an outstanding ROI.”
adidas created their own football show for sports obsessed teens, and built a young audience which continues to grow and enjoy the content. Gamedayplus Season 2 received 16.2m views, of which a massive 65% were organic, gaining a 32% increase in adidas YouTube subscribers.
“With editorially led content, brand activity becomes less intrusive, content stays relevant and audiences get a better experience.”
For the last three years, Tesco has created content for key cultural moments in the calendar year - from Halloween to Christmas to Valentine’s Day. Viewers who saw Tesco’s Shoppable TrueView ads drove a 9% uplift in purchase intent, cited as best in class versus the category average on YouTube.
“We stood out by being genuinely helpful, gaining cut-through in a notoriously overcrowded space.”
In a sea of offer-led TV advertising, Unibet took the unusual step of creating an online series that actually helped their customers win. Combining science, data, sport and entertainment, the Euro 2016 series saw a 115% increase in new accounts compared to the 2014 World Cup and an ROI of £18.25:£1.
“We decided to do a complete 180 on the industry and became the bookmaker that helped people win.”
In a bid to engage a hard to reach audience, EE created a football mini-series that culminated in a match at Wembley Stadium, attended by 20,000+ and streamed live to the internet. The series attracted over 40 million views and EE became the preferred network for this audience for the first time in its history.
“1.5 million people watched The Wembley Cup final live on YouTube, rivaling many Premier League matches.”
