Panasonic launches HD Viera range to establish itself as sector leaders (despite its competitors having bigger marketing budgets) with an annual sponsorship of Sky Movies.
The partnership gave Panasonic the opportunity to show off its product attributes and associate the brand with the biggest blockbuster movie premieres – together bringing the ultimate home entertainment experience.
As well as extending exposure across the whole year to ensure coverage of all purchase cycles the sponsorship objectives include increasing awareness, communicate best picture/image quality, position Panasonic as an innovative brand and as synonymous with High Definition technology.
The sponsorship ran from 6pm – midnight on Friday and Saturday nights and the highlight was the weekly Saturday Premiere.
Through the year the campaign embraced 2,800 films which were seen by over 12 million viewers. Every movie on all 10 Sky Movie screens (inc HD) carried a 20-second opening and 10-second closing ident.
As well as the sponsorship bumpers, over 50,000 Panasonic-branded Sky Movie Promos were aired – seen by over 38 million viewers.
The creative for the campaign was produced in-house by Sky as part of the deal. The execution highlighted the product attributes – superior high definition picture quality, colour and the aesthetic of the TV – ‘bringing ideas to life’.
Results:
To evaluate the effectiveness of the sponsorship campaign, research was conducted using 1300 Sky Movies viewers and a control group of 600 non-viewers. Key measures included: levels of awareness; message take-out and impact on the brand – with specific focus on HD.
The overall sponsorship awareness for the campaign was very positive for Panasonic. Compared to other technology sponsorships Panasonics generated a 47% awareness which is a 27% improvement from 37%.
When asked unprompted about, “Which HDTV makes were sponsoring anything on TV” viewers to Sky Movies were more than twice as likely to mention Panasonic than their nearest competitor (Sony).
Those that were aware of the sponsorship were asked about what messages they thought the campaign portrayed. Recall focussed on HDTV and its attributes – which was the association Panasonic were looking for. 31% of respondents recalled ‘a clear picture’ and ‘better quality’.
The sponsorship also aided the brand perception shift that Panasonic were striving for. Comparing the control group to viewers, significant shifts were registered for the statements, ‘is a reliable brand’ (11%), ‘makes innovative products’ (11%) and ‘offers good value for money’ (28%).
92% of viewers agreed that the synergy of the sponsorship was spot-on with 80% agreeing that they enjoyed the sponsorship. The success was confimed with 53% said the sponsorship made them want to find-out more, and 7% claiming to have gone on to visit Panasonic’s website.
The sponsorship also delivered in the drive for ‘Viera’ brand awareness, with 19% of viewers mentioning it when asked about HDTV, compared to just 10% for non viewers.
Sky Movies viewers who were aware of the sponsorship proved to be far more positive towards the Panasonic brand and directionally more likely to say they would buy a TV from Panasonic. In fact, 65% said that they were likely to buy a Panasonic TV in future.
Comment:
The stats suggest that the sponsorship of film premieres on Sky Movies and Sky Movies HD delivered fantastic audience coverage, year round presence, and cemented a firm association with movies; which is a proven driver for HD TV sales.
The key campaign objectives have clearly been achieved and opinions shifted positively amongst viewers. With Sky’s content leading the way in HD programming, the sponsorship has delivered fantastic additional benefits by association, increasing both the propensity to purchase an HD TV and also to make that choice Panasonic Viera.
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