2015 Promo & Activation

BREAKVERTISING

TitleBREAKVERTISING
BrandSBS BROADCASTING GROUP BELGIUM
Product/ServiceNEW TV ADVERTISING REVENUE MODEL
Category A05. Product Launch/re-Launch or Multi-Product Promotion
Entrant Company THESE DAYS - WUNDERMAN Antwerp, BELGIUM
Advertising Agency THESE DAYS - WUNDERMAN Antwerp, BELGIUM
Production Company TELENET Mechelen, BELGIUM
Production Company 2 THE BREAKFAST CLUB Gent, BELGIUM
Production Company 3 PIXMIX STUDIOS Berchem, BELGIUM
Credits
Name Company Position
Sigrid Van Den Houte SBS Chief Commercial Officer
Inge Smidts Telenet Senior VP Residential Marketing
Matthias De Smet These Days Copywriter
Gertjan De Smet These Days Art Director
Werner Van Reck These Days Chief Creative Officer
Pieter Staes These Days Associate Creative Director
Manuel Ostyn These Days Associate Creative Director
Sam De Volder These Days Executive Creative Director
Mateusz Mroszczak These Days Creative Director
Toon Diependaele These Days Chief Strategy Officer
Nicolas Moerman These Days Strategic Planner
Jef Raeman These Days Strategic Planner
Jentina Van Eynde These Days Account Manager
Dagmar Duportail The Breakfast Club Producer
Jeff Bronder The Breakfast Club Director
Peter Baert Raygun Production Manager

The Brief

TV advertising is expensive, especially in Flanders (Belgium) with a total audience of only 6 million people. SBS is one of the smaller Flemish TV broadcasters with an average market share of 11,37%. Since they are not the biggest, they have to be the brightest in a bid to convince Flemish marketers to allocate their budget to SBS. From the consumer perspective we observe an increasing shift in TV viewing behavior towards on-demand viewing and ad-skipping, putting more strain on the TV advertising model. If we wanted to win advertisers we had to adapt to the viewing behavior of consumers.

Campaign Success

While for Flemish CMO’s TV is still the main medium of choice, we have observed an evolution towards digital advertising. Digital advertising offers more advanced possibilities in terms of targeting, relevance & measurability. New innovations in this space from big players such as Google & Facebook attract a lot of attention from these CMO’s with as result increasing doubts about their TV spending. SBS has been relying heavily on inventing new advertising formats to keep brands and their agencies interested in the possibilities of TV advertising. To really compete with digital advertising, we had to evolve TV advertising from a mass medium to a more targeted & direct experience, creating a first step towards a better relationship between marketers & consumers

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

Interest for advertising on the SBS channels peaked and over 75 major brands wanted in on this new development in advertising. Boosting both sales and revenue for the coming year. Breakvertising sparked a huge debate with advertisers, broadcasters and advertising agencies alike, becoming a major topic in Belgian media. And it reaffirmed the image of SBS as one of the most forward-thinking broadcasting companies in Belgium.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

People now have the power to skip whatever they want including advertising, therefore broadcaster SBS had to come up with something to boost their sales of advertising space and to stand out in a shrinking market. Instead of interrupting the viewing pleasure to communicate to viewers, we gave them the power and communicated when they themselves decide to pause their content. We developed an advertising innovation for TV Broadcaster SBS, that starts from this real consumer behavior. The moment somebody takes a break (pushes the pause button) we display a non-intrusive commercial message, which is tailored based on the consumer's past viewing data and the context they are in. This can be a still or moving image or even an interactive screen. As soon as consumers press play, their content starts again and the advert disappears.