Journalism Portfolio: Public Relations: O2 Consumer Campaign

A Breakdown of O2's 'Priority Moments' Consumer Campaign

The following report will build on the group presentation; taking a closer look at O2’s ‘Priority Moments’ consumer campaign, analyzing and critically evaluating it in context with Watson and Noble’s PRE model (Institute of Public Relations, 2001). Analysis would be fruitless however without first giving an insight into what ‘Priority Moments’ actually entails and how the idea came about.

O2 are mobile market leaders in the UK with a 27.1% market share¹ and in September 2010 they launched ‘Priority Tickets’; an initiative that allowed O2 customers first refusal on tickets for shows all over their 14 UK arenas as well as another 1,500 venues². ‘Tickets’ proved a massive success, selling over 600,000 tickets in its first 24 months³, and in 2011‘Moments’ was launched. Whereas ‘Tickets’ was restricted to certain events, ‘Moments’ enables O2 users to find proximity based everyday deals at a variety of restaurants, high street stores and cinemas through the official app⁴.

This report will analyse the ‘Moments’ campaign in line with Watson and Noble’s ‘Planning, Research and Evaluation’ (PRE) model⁵, a five-step model that covers the length of a campaign. The influence of media nowadays means that organisations need to think as they move and be adaptive; constantly analysing and evaluating themselves throughout a campaign, and this model will reflect the ‘Priority Moments’ campaign’s receptiveness well.

Audit

The ‘Audit’ process will involve an organisation taking a look within and seeing where they are at present and what they want to achieve in the future.

There is evidence that O2 had a look at themselves and decided change was needed. Despite the success of ‘Tickets’ and O2 still holding the majority market share in the UK, the organisation’s profit declined 4.3%, down to £1.3billion in the second quarter of 2011 and contract customers fell 83% from 150,000 to 25,000⁶. The days of simply offering better tariff rates are redundant and O2 knew this; a lack of innovation within the industry⁶ was blamed for the slump and ‘Moments’ was just this innovative idea in tough economic times.

O2 looked at the ever-evolving digital landscape in Britain nowadays and knew that they had to keep current to stay ahead of their rivals. O2 UK business director, Ben Dowd said; “There is a big push for digital Britain right now, the economy is struggling and there are organisations that can help with technology, we’re one of them and are trying to help British businesses. It’s about creating a wow factor for our consumers but also those who aren’t also.”⁷

Setting Objectives

For a campaign to have any chance of success there must be clear and concise strategies and objectives. Having acknowledged the need for change, O2 were keen to push ‘Moments’ through with clear outcomes put in place and the strategies needed to achieve these outcomes formulated.

The key objectives were; to reach new customers and reduce churn, boost revenue and footfall, enhance the organisation’s reputation, help boost British businesses in hard times and connect with existing customers on a deeper level improving loyalty. Having looked at the statistics from the audit it was obvious that O2 would want to reduce churn, increase profits and improve their reputation; it makes simple business sense. O2 had over 30 official launch partners of ‘Moments’ with big brands such as WHSmith’s, Zizzi’s, ODEON and Harvey Nichols signing up for a minimum of three years⁸. This is evidence that O2 are sticking to their ethos; trying to help British businesses and give the high street a boom.

The nature of the ‘Moments’ scheme means that it reaches everyone, not just O2 users, and by generating this interest and improving loyalty with existing customers the profits will gradually rise. The director of Business development for O2 UK, Tim Sefton’s statement backs this up; “The more customers using these products and services the better because that creates the relationship that we can then build on to sell them more products”⁹. Loyalty is crucial in the mobile industry, and by offering their customers exclusive everyday discounts O2 are communicating that they hold their consumers in high regard, the clever ‘Priority’ name clearly suggests this. It was a win win¹⁰ situation for O2 as long as the strategies were right.

Strategy and Plan

Having deciphered where they want to be, O2 then had to decide on how to get there. The third step of the model focuses on what an organisation wants to say, what messages they want to get across and how they want to get there. Strategy is an absolutely essential part of a campaign and O2 were keen to get theirs right, employing a number of different tactics.

‘Moments’ was launched in July 2011 at the London OXO2 at an extravagant, experiential press event¹¹ and O2 were keen to make a good first impression. Reputable PR consultancy ‘Sledge’ were hired to organise the event and there were four different ‘zones’ in which the press could sample a taster of the type of offers that ‘Moments’ provides. There was each a zone for a few of ‘Moments’ biggest launch partners; WHSmith’s, Zizzi, ODEON and Harvey Nichols. The thought behind the interactivity of the launch was to generate a buzz; this type of launch would get people talking and emphasise that O2 are a company that likes to give back.

However, the fulcrum of their plan was undoubtedly to use the power of social media to generate exposure and promote the ‘Moments’ launch further. “This is about changing things and harnessing the power of ideas, media and technology to create new possibilities”¹², said Mark Stevenson, managing director, O2 UK. O2 are renowned for communicating with their customers and they hold an influence on social media¹³; regularly posting on their Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube feeds and often updating their official blog, ‘The Blue’, where the Moments scheme was actually announced.

Photos of the press launch event were instantly put on their Flickr account and its announcement was broadcast to its 160,000 Twitter followers, 670,000 Facebook subscribers and not least text messaged to its 22million customers in the UK.

Twitter was the cornerstone in their social media plan and O2 paid £65,000 for a tactic that let them post 40 promoted ‘tweets’ (these are posts that appear in a user’s newsfeed even if they aren’t subscribed to the poster), and a promoted trend¹⁴. The campaign worked by asking followers to ‘choose their own adventure’, presenting users with a series of options and inviting them to tweet their decision via a hash tag. This created a fun, interactive game style communication between customer and consumer and after submitting their tweets, followers would then receive personalized tweets back from O2 based on their choices and be presented with new options¹⁴.

This two-way communicative campaign allowed feedback and constant discussion with their customers. Alex Pearmain, head of social at O2 said “O2 doesn’t see Twitter as either an advertising or engagement channel, but both, with paid for media now as important as earned media in the social space.”¹⁴

A similar method was used on Facebook as part of a 16-week campaign¹⁵ including exclusive previews of TV adverts and promotional offers and the ‘Moments’ app itself. O2’s official YouTube channel has over 11million subscribers so O2 were keen to employ that audience as a useful tool in the ‘Moments’ launch strategy. Several teaser videos were posted in the build up to the release and there were adverts and interviews about the product.

Away from social media O2 invested £6million¹⁶ into a traditional media advertising blanket campaign. As the ‘Moment’ app is location centric, the outdoor advertising was crucial to the campaign. “The advertising campaign includes TV to create mass awareness, but as priority moments is a location based mobile service, outdoor advertising will be key”¹⁷ said Sally Cowdry, O2 marketing and consumer director.

There were billboards, bus advertisements and posters all over the country allowing consumers to be alerted to the scheme instantly, giving them the opportunity to download the app and reap the rewards straight away with offers in their proximity on display. There were several TV adverts¹⁸ which were played regularly on all the major UK channels and there were a lot of advertisements printed in the press; presented in a mysterious manner, asking people to just text ‘Moments’ to 2020 without explaining the concept. The thinking behind this from O2’s point of view is to entice people in and make them feel as if they are missing out. It is clever marketing, the whole motive behind all of the strategies was to gain exposure and awareness.

Ongoing Measurement

After the execution of the strategies it’s crucial to pay attention to how the campaign is being received and be willing to make any changes if absolutely necessary. After the launch O2 were keen to gather feedback and see the impact that they were having.

The response on social media was huge with over 7,500 direct mentions, 2,800 trend mentions and 7.8million impressions on Twitter¹⁴. The incredible participation of consumers was an obvious indicator to O2 that they were doing something right.

The actual product itself, the ‘Moments’ app, had monumental success with 480,000 downloads in the first two weeks after its release, soaring to the top of the UK app charts. After two months of being on the market 370,000 people were signed up for the service and a total of 21million offers had been viewed within the same period¹⁹.

Although there were no official quotes from O2 about how they analysed ‘Moments’ reception, the sheer wealth of readily available data from other sources suggests that they were of course conscious of how well the campaign was going. They are a communicative company and part of their strategy was in line with this; after the app was released they were able to receive feedback and respond to customers who had opinions on product via the app store reviews and their various social media mediums. An update for the app was available shortly after release, reducing the booking process from a two-step one to a simple one-step method¹⁶. This could be perceived as evidence that O2 carefully considered the feedback they were receiving and as a result acted to pander to their consumers needs.

Results and Evaluation

In a sense with this specific campaign, the fourth step of ‘Ongoing Measurement’ actually intertwines with the fifth, ‘Results and Evaluation’. There was no specific moment in time in which O2 sat down at the end of the campaign and discussed ‘how they did’; ‘Moments’ is actually still going strong, something I will touch on further, so in a sense, the only evaluating that O2 did for the project was ‘ongoing measurement’; seeing the response after launch and constantly adapting to meet the feedback they were receiving. This is actually true of the PRE model as it is a continuous cycle; this represents O2 who are constantly moving and evaluating.

Conclusion

At the beginning of the process O2 had a look at the current climate and realised that change and new innovative ideas were needed to buck profit losses. These changes are evident when you look at the statistics and it becomes apparent that O2 have indeed fulfilled their objectives set at stage two of the process.

In the first full business quarter after ‘Moments’ launch, (Q1 2012), O2 announced that 223,000 contract customers had signed up, a 48%increase on the previous period, and that the churn rate was down to less than 1%⁶. These are no co-incidences and O2 raised the bar creatively. This creativity led to Moments being promoted exponentially, being unavoidable whether it be on TV, online, mobile or outside in your town. This was imperative to the campaigns success and brand consideration and reputation were as a result, at an all time high.

From the outset O2 knew what they wanted to achieve and how they were going to achieve these things but a crucial part of the campaigns success was the target audience. As I touched on earlier, the USP of ‘Moments’ was that it offers everyday proximity based deals that appeal to everyone. O2 were targeting everyone with this campaign, even non-O2 customers, as they knew that in hard economical times this product would appeal to the masses. Sally Cowdry, the O2 marketing and consumer director’s statement backs this up; “We wanted products that weren’t too niche, we wanted to ensure we had offers for things people did on a regular basis.”²⁰

The campaign’s simplicity was as crucial as its consistency, you know what you are getting with O2 and that is what makes them so successful. Their promotions are instantly recognizable and done in a manner that appeals to a large demographic and allows momentum to gather.

There is no doubt that social media played an integral role and the campaigns success can be attributed to O2’s strategies on those online mediums. The stand out success was the interactive Twitter campaign that generated an unheard of ‘117%’ engagement rate¹⁴ and really led to ‘Moment’s being exposed exponentially. Bruce Daisley, sales director at Twitter said that the campaign “broke new ground creatively” and was a “tribute to the creativity that O2 brought to the platform”¹⁴. To date, ‘Moments’ has been specifically hash tagged in over 7,500 tweets²¹.

So in conclusion, having looked at the range of data and evidence available, it wouldn’t be too bold to deem the ‘Moments’ campaign an overwhelming success. If there was one criticism it would be that O2 didn’t provide much official data on how the campaign was doing, but there was so much readily available information from other reputable sources that accurate conclusions could be drawn anyway. ‘Moments’ is still going from strength to strength and has recently evolved to include over 250,000 independent businesses within its deals²². This is further evidence that O2 have stuck to their initial objective of boosting British business and they invested £2.5million⁷ to promote the local businesses launch. A ‘Priority Sports Moments’ app has also been launched by O2 in July 2012 and has had success of the same ilk as ‘Moments’, with over 50,000 downloads as of November²³.

Possible Alterations

With a campaign as successful as ‘Moments’ it’s hard to actually think of any alternative tactics that could have improved things; the numbers really speak volumes.

Hypothetically speaking though, it might have been even more productive to have secured a major celebrity to vociferously back the campaign and reach an even deeper target audience. It is hard to say just what effect this would have had though as it was a very successful product. A possible reason O2 didn’t choose to go down this route was because their company ethos is all about clear, concise communication and integrated, understandable messages. A celebrity could have actually distracted from the product itself and caused ambiguity, as has been the case before with campaigns such as Usain Bolt promoting Virgin Media earlier in the year²⁴.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and nobody could surely have predicted just how rapidly ‘Moments’ would take off, but one thing O2 could have done is maybe got even more partners on board for the launch. This would obviously have provided more variety and would therefore appeal to an even larger target audience. O2 refused to disclose the financial deals between themselves and their partners for ‘Moments’ however⁹, so it is hard to say whether more partners would have been feasible.