How connected TV supercharged a start-up: the NIO Cocktails case study
On 1st July 2020, the nation watched Holly Willoughby expertly shake, tear and pour a NIO Cocktail live on ITV’s This Morning
Traditionally, the journey from a direct-to-consumer brand’s first social media buy to their first TV investment takes eight years on average (source: VAB, ‘The Halo Effect: TV as a Growth Engine’). DTC brands typically establish loyal - sometimes niche - consumer bases on social media, before maxing out on performance marketing and eventually ‘crossing the chasm’ to mainstream ATL channels. NIO Cocktails, however, was founded in Italy in 2017, launched in the UK in December 2019, and was live on TV for the first time on 16th October 2020. Changes in consumer habits that were already present pre-COVID accelerated dramatically as a result of lockdown and the on-trade shutdown, and NIO seized the moment to accelerate their path to TV, while millions of people sat at home watching.
NIO Cocktails recognised the opportunity to step-change awareness of, and lead the growth in, the ready-to-savour cocktail space. The objective of the campaign was to use mainstream, above the line media to drive awareness of the brand, incremental visits to NIOcocktails.co.uk and subsequently increase sales over Q4 2020.
Expertly crafted, delivered to you
TV was proposed as the medium of choice, namely for its role as a legitimiser - enhancing NIO’s reputation and stature, in spite of the brand’s nascency. According to recently published research from Thinkbox, ‘Signalling Success’, brands that advertise on TV are significantly more likely to be perceived as high quality, confident, trustworthy, popular and successful. We wanted to build a valuable community around the NIO brand, that would signal to others and invite them in.
Moreover, as an innovative product (ready-to-drink cocktails delivered through the letterbox in recyclable packaging not dissimilar to CD cases) in the behemoth alcohol category, TV afforded NIO Cocktails a memorable storytelling opportunity - 30 seconds to creatively explain NIO Cocktails’ proposition (choice, convenience and quality), and to emotionally convince consumers they were better off buying NIO than trying (and failing) to make high quality cocktails at home. Due to NIO’s prior reliance on performance marketing, and the 'test-learn' nature of the budget, we needed to devise a plan that would show investors immediate results and provide sufficient learnings for future campaign spend. Since the beginning of lockdown, viewing of Broadcaster VOD has surged +45% (source: BARB), and streaming has now overtaken linear viewing of TV (source: Samsung Ads Europe). Along with the benefits of linear TV - trusted, premium, emotional - we opted for a BVOD campaign that could also be targeted, agile, and measurable. By providing a single access point to the broadcast ecosystem, we recommended Finecast as the platform of choice. This allowed us to efficiently plan, deliver unified audiences and optimise effectively for optimal results.
Our brand idea - ‘Expertly Crafted, Delivered to You’ - drove close integration between media and creative. NIO Cocktails provide bar quality cocktails delivered to your door, and we wanted the media solution to be tailored, flexible, and delivered to the right people in the right mindset at the right time - just like the product.
Cocktails - and media - should not be wasted
Broadcaster VOD is great for avoiding wastage, delivering the power of TV with the precision of data. It allows you to speak to the demographics and psychographics you believe most likely to convert, while they are watching their favourite programmes on demand. We uncovered a valuable purchase intent insight - people like passing on their discovery of NIO. Customer feedback showed people either received NIO as a gift, then started buying it for themselves, or tried it themselves, then sent it as a gift to their friends. A virtuous circle of trial.
So, we developed 2 key audience segments that echoed these purchase habits - ‘Cocktail Fans’ and ‘Generous Christmas Gifters’ - using YouGov, Experian, CACI, Acxiom and Mastercard data. As well as transaction and demographic data, we used lifestyle statements from YouGov’s panels to refine our audiences. Finecast also provided NIO with a control segment comprising ‘18+ All Adults’ - allowing us to identify further pen portraits beyond our 2 bullseye segments that responded particularly strongly to the creative. The campaign set up balanced delivery between the two defined audiences and the ‘control’.
Timing was a key factor in campaign planning. Gifting search data from Google Trends showed a building trend leading to a peak in the last week of November. Consequently, the objective of the TV plan was to get ahead of this searching peak, to be in consumers’ minds when the time was right for them to shop. We set the live date for 16th October, and planned a front weighted campaign, delivering over two thirds of the impressions by the end of November, a period when we knew our ‘Generous Christmas Gifters’ would be looking forward to Christmas more than ever. And with the party season well and truly cancelled, we wanted to remain accessible for our ‘Cocktail Fans’ to celebrate from the comfort of their own sofa throughout December. We planned for delivery of impressions to remain high after the gifting search peak, but to taper off in order to manage reach and frequency.
The campaign was split into two bursts of activity, 16/10 - 20/11 and 21/11 - 22/12, providing NIO the opportunity to halt further investment into the campaign halfway through, should the business not see incremental results. Fortunately, this was not the case! Throughout, delivery and performance were tracked, and pacing/weighting optimisations made on a weekly basis in agreement with the client, to reflect both the impact on the business and key dates. Moreover, we updated the creative’s VO to reference Christmas during the key gifting period and deployed it against the Gifters audience from late November through to the delivery cut-off date, serving the most relevant messaging at the optimal time to drive performance.
The campaign delivery plan was based on a consistant delivery week on week. Illustrated below, the Y-axis shows impressions delivered (specific data removed for confidentiality), Blue= total, Aqua=all adults control, Yellow= Cocktail Fans, Red= Christmas Gifters.
Alongside reporting of standard media metrics (impressions, completed views, time of day & day of week) using Finecast’s F-report system, we worked closely with NIO to build a bespoke framework that delivered twice weekly, postcode level date-stamped reporting. This allowed us to analyse the campaign’s impact on business performance and adapt the plan according to the findings. Web uplift for organic and paid search, website sessions and sales uplift were the key metrics tracked. The framework allowed for the true impact of the BVOD activity to be accessed both in isolation and in combination with social and digital channels live during the campaign.
Gin (and objectives) proved
Brand impressions, direct & organic search all surged while the ATL was running (when social spend was flat). The green spikes below show search impressions spiking during the campaign period.
Total web sessions increased. We anticipated that initial campaign demand would cause a drop in conversion rate, but per the forecast, it not only bounced back but exceeded previous levels through campaign optimisation.
Most importantly, revenue increased exponentially (and profitably) throughout the campaign period, compared to the previous 3 months (exact revenue amounts removed from the y axis for confidentiality).
NIO Cocktails do not price promote (despite the campaign being live on Black Friday), so this was not a factor in the success of the marketing. Nor was NIO an overnight success merely as a result of consumer behaviour during the pandemic, which had been ongoing for over 6 months by the campaign live date. The campaign exceeded expectations. In the words of Richard Sager, general manager at NIO Cocktails, “We had some pretty big questions to answer and a TV ad to design, shoot and produce in a very short space of time. The revenue data speaks for itself - the spot also drove awareness and, as importantly intrigue, and the resulting performance was great to see...but beyond that, hearing people say they'd seen the ad and the warm responses to it meant that we knew we'd served the right people with great creative.”
In ‘The Halo Effect: TV as a Growth Engine’, VAB conclude that “TV is no longer the medium exclusive to the established, blue chip brand.” We agree. It’s time for a new generation of brands to rise up and have their time to shine on the big screen, and NIO Cocktails is a prime example of how BVOD can legitimise a small business and expedite growth plans.