ITV, Virgin and O2: Offering customers the best of both worlds, on a supercharged scale, both in the home and on the move.
A little background
In June 2021, two titans of connectivity joined forces to form a new business: Virgin Media O2. Their merger would offer customers the best of both worlds, on a supercharged scale, both in the home and on the move. As you’d expect, the launch of its first joint product would need to bring benefits to life and establish the new business. Enter VOLT: connectivity for home and
mobile at lightning speeds... bigger, better, faster!
Our insight
Q: How do you make an ‘invisible’ service visible?
A: Show the size of the influence it has on everything it
touches!
The big idea
The hook was their ‘VOLT-stream’... a blazing flash of red and blue energy, rooted in transforming everything it touched, and turning it from good... to GREAT! ITV and MGOMD’s plan would launch the campaign directly from within ITV content. If the VOLT-stream really was as powerful as it states, then we should be able to see the supercharged effect it had on even our biggest and highest energy shows, channels and talent.
Making it happen
First, our primetime Saturday night launch (9th April) began with us ‘VOLT-ing’ our main channel continuity, with our ITV voice... “And now, ITV proudly presents a moment of transformation... as Virgin Media O2 supercharges your world. This is VOLT.” The announcer’s voice changed, the VOLT-stream whooshed in, and the screen fizzed and buzzed to life! Immediately afterwards, a major product placement saw the VOLT-stream take a starring role in the final Saturday Night Takeaway (SNT) episode of the series. Show aficionados will already know of the high octane challenges of ‘Ant vs Dec’ where the boys go head to head. Tonight, Ant (in red) and Dec (in blue) were racing around a track riding various power tools. Branding featured on the track perimeter, the final pit stop, and VOLT supercharged the power-tool on the final pit-stop, making it super-speedy, with the energy stream flowing out of the tool, and onto the LED screens surrounding the circuit. Now that’s how to product-place energy! Additionally, ITV’s Stephen Mulhern had given customers and Virgin Media O2 internal staff a chance to win tickets for the final SNT show, to celebrate the launch.
Our ‘VOLT-ed’ weekend was followed by a whole week’s takeover. ITV Creative worked with the client and agencies to bring the VOLT-stream creative device into famous ITV assets, showing it sweep energetically across iconic sets, locations, talent and shows, and leaving them visibly changed. These 30-sec bespoke ads ran during the week of launch, and showed the stream affecting set backgrounds, lighting, props and even people across Emmerdale, The Chase and This Morning. The ads also ran contextually around the same shows, adding further weight to the wider VOLT campaign.The launch created a massive foundation on which to build the following month’s campaign.
675k
The SNT episode alone generated at least £675k of media value. It delivered 43 pieces of coverage, and generated an increase of 12% in social sentiment.
Searches for VOLT were 34% higher than in the previous month.
60% Kantar showed brand awareness of VOLT and Virgin Media O2 were 60% and 45% better than target.
48% Positive appeal of VOLT stood at 67%, with 48% considering signing up to the new service.
Award Winning Won Bronze for Best Media Idea Campaign at the Media Week Awards 2022.
