England might not have performed as well as we all hoped but Absolute Radio’s World Cup content & marketing campaign has been a massive success.
We reunited Baddiel and Skinner for a series of exclusive podcasts and live radio shows around the World Cup – Baddiel and Skinner’s Absolute Radio Podcasts supported by Sony Ericsson, Official Mobile Handset of the 2010 FIFA World Cup™. The podcasts saw the much-loved comedy pair in South Africa for the duration of the World Cup with a mix of chat, analysis, news and of course comedy from the football tournament. The campaign produced 20 podcasts and four live radio shows with the pair calling into the Christian O’Connell Breakfast Show throughout the campaign.
To kick off the campaign, and to see Frank and David on their merry way to South Africa full of anticipation and hope for England’s performance, Absolute Radio staged a South Africa Send Off Party at the London’s Lyric Theatre with Baddiel & Skinner performing ‘Live and Unplanned’ for the first time in 14 years. Keane, James and The Lightning Seeds also performed at the party in front of an sold out audience the event was the perfect mix of comedy, football and live music.
Over 2.3 million podcasts were downloaded throughout the campaign coming from 268,185 unique ip addresses with each IP downloaded an average of 6.85 files. The podcast reached number 1 in the podcast chart within the first week of launch with five of the top ten episodes in the iTunes podcast chart. The podcasts received great accolade in the press generating huge talkability and they received a 4.5 star out of 5 rating on iTunes – testament to their quality and entertainment value.For the first time, Absolute Radio moved into short form animation, commissioning a series of four animated videos of the podcasts – the first time a commercial radio station has commissioned such a series. The four videos produced 187,000 views/downloads on iTunes alone.
Online at www.absoluteradio.co.uk the Baddiel & Skinner section generated 167,313 page views and accounted for 60% of the traffic for the entire Football section during the period, firmly cementing the website as a football destination prior to the start of 2010/2011 Barclays Premier League season.
Absolute Radio’s campaign provided Sony Ericsson with an exceptional content strand to communicate their key messages with regards to their official partner status as well as their new Vivaz handset. With the campaign led by podcasting, they were the perfect partner as they could directly facilitate the content as well as be associated with it. There was no question come the end of the tournament, who was the hero brand for Absolute Radio listeners when it came to the World Cup.
Sony Ericsson added an extra element to the station’s World Cup campaign by running a competition on the Christian O’Connell Breakfast Show to send one lucky listener out to South Africa to watch the tournament and to give his, an everyday fan’s, point of view as well as our two celebrated pundits. The winner, James Roe, wrote daily blogs and recorded a video diary that was posted on both absoluteradio.co.uk and the Sony Ericsson UK facebook page.
The campaign also included a cross media aspect working in conjunction with Spotify with fully branded Absolute Radio and Sony Ericsson audio and online ads.
And finally, Absolute Radio’s Fantasy League game generated 1,463,883 page views from 48,782 visitors with 18,177 teams, 10,582 managers which equated to 155,000 visits and 1.3m page views along with thousands of smartphone application downloads.
by Clive Dickens
