It's Not Funny

Background

Every separately occupied household in the country with a TV needs a TV licence - and that includes a room in a hall of residence. Around 45% of students take a TV to university, and need to buy their own TV licence or risk prosecution and a fine of up to £1,000. However, awareness of this amongst pre-university students is understandably low. The aim of the campaign was to ensure that they are fully informed about the need for a TV licence and where and how to buy one before they potentially break the law.

Idea

Proximity London came up with an integrated, multi-channel campaign, making contact with first time students at over 30 different touchpoints along their journey into academic life. This campaign cleverly targets students at three key stages of this journey: in their parents’ homes before leaving; at the point that they arrive at university; onwards into the academic term.

First time students have many more obvious spending priorities, and value each other’s opinions far more than those of advertisers. Every item was therefore designed to harness the power of ‘word-of-mouth’, and draw students into spreading the message themselves. This was achieved through a core creative idea, inspired directly by students themselves, of ‘anti-humour’. Wherever students came into contact with Proximity’s anti-humour campaign, they were drawn into ‘jokes’ reminding them of one thing - ‘It’s not funny watching TV without a licence’.

Posters blitzed more than 250 university sites across the UK (some of them personalised for students who had visited the stand at Fresher’s Fairs). Students arriving in their rooms found ‘Good Luck’ cards telling them how to get a licence. Stickers on their aerial sockets and post-it notes on their PCs reinforced the message. The ‘It’s not funny…’ message was also revealed in unexpected places around campus like libraries, using well placed bookmarks, book covers and joke pens. There was a large digital element to the campaign. Proximity used student websites, banner ads, emails and even SMS to get the message across.

Finally, the pièce-de-resistance: they even involved students in making their own ‘It’s not funny…’ TV programmes, by filming their un-funny jokes which were then aired on TVs all around their campus (topped and tailed with the line – ‘Remember comedians, it’s not funny watching TV without a licence either’ and a strong call to action to visit the website).

Results

The campaign delivered a 25% year on year uplift in sales and an ROI of 12:1. Furthermore, the contribution of the ‘component parts’ of the campaign has also been directly quantified. Proximity used an innovative evaluation framework, known as the ‘Brick Analysis’, specially designed to evaluate a complex, integrated media mix. The analysis shows how different elements of the campaign combined to impact on sales in practice, proving that an integrated approach can really work. The analysis revealed benchmark results for different media mixes, including:

One ‘Brick’: a base level of sales attributable to ‘Broadcast’ activity - mass mailings, inserts, BBC trails and PR.

Two ‘Bricks’: incremental sales generated by introducing additional targeted DM into the mix, which resulted in a 30% increase in sales.

Three ‘Bricks’: the contribution of niche targeted Student TV to the above, increasing sales by a further 30%.

Four ‘Bricks’: the quantified impact of deploying a fully integrated, multi-channel campaign across all 30 touchpoints, producing nearly twice the sales as ‘Broadcast’ alone.

The campaign won ‘Best Integrated Campaign’ at the Precision Marketing Awards 2006. It was shortlisted in three categories at Cannes and won a Bronze Lion for Commercial Public Services. It was also shortlisted in three categories (including Campaign of the Year) at the Marketing Week Effectiveness Awards. And, rather unusually for a campaign that is rooted in data driven DM, it was also been entered into the IPA Advertising Effectiveness Awards.

Target Audience

New students going to University for the first time. Persuading them to part with £126.50 for a TV Licence has got to be one of the hardest ‘sells’ on campus.

Size

Over 250 university sites across the country