Advertising: Sky's Campaign Success and Boy Who Cried Wolf

I've featured several of the Sky TV fairy tale ads over the last few years, especially the last few months with my daily fairy tale advertising posts, especially at Advertising: Sky TV Spots and Fairy Tales and Advertising: SKY Satellite TV and Fairy Tales. Well, a new one was launched in the UK on Christmas Day, "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" this time. While it is a fun ad like the rest, what I found most interesting was some of the media coverage, such as this from Sky hails success of fairytale TV broadband ad campaign by Nigel Adie:

Sky has claimed its 'fairytale' broadband advertising campaign is so well-recognised that the satellite broadcaster has been able to spend less while still attracting more customers.

Since launching the ads in 2010, unprompted consumer awareness of Sky Broadband has risen from 51 per cent to 66 per cent, the pay TV giant's figures show.

The company is now planning to shift the adverts to digital and owned media platforms, although the TV campaign's latest installment - based on Aesop's Fable The Boy Who Cried Wolf - is set to premiere on Christmas Day, reports Marketing Week.

Lucian Smithers, director of brand strategy and communications at BSkyB, explained Sky spent less on media this year than in 2010.

"The campaign has become so well-known now that our maintenance levels are lower, but our acquisition numbers are still high," he remarked.

You can also read a case study about the campaign at ThinkBox.

“The construct of a typical fairytale often starts with the hero or main character in a distressing situation, but finishes with a happy ending. It’s with this in mind that the Fairytale campaign was conceived […] the DRTV ad’s liberation of broadband from its (distressing) past pricing and lack of value to the happy ending of being part of a great value bundle with Sky TV and calls […] The 40” advert resulted in record levels of efficiency for Sky DRTV with a CPA of £127 versus an expectation of £250, and has since been re-used with similarly impressive results.”

Now folks, that's the kind of success ad agencies salivate over. It is a savvy campaign.