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FOUR’s home of not rugby wins Glossies

The January/February round of voting for The Glossies has been tabulated, and FOUR’s Home of NOT Rugby in ACP’s Metro, cooked up by FOUR and Special Group, has taken top honours with 27 percent of the vote. Yellow Pencil BrandSharp’s effort for Red Paris in NZ Marketing got them tantalisingly close, with 26 percent, and Chris Dobbs was third for Working Style in Metro (10 percent). That’s two in a row for Special Group…

TV3 and FOUR’s head of marketing Amanda Wilson says she’s really proud of the campaign:

“Special did a great job on execution – in particular this print ad, they really actually had to talk me around leaving that much empty space on a page – but look who’s laughing now.  Thank you Michael, Tony, Annabel, Rob… well done!”

MediaWorks and Special Group’s decision to zig while everyone else zagged in the year of the Oval Ball has already been recognised. It took out the IABNZ BollyAward in September, a merit certificate from NAB, in October, and gold for ‘Most Outstanding Marketing Initiative’ at the Promax Awards.

Creative director Tony Bradbourne says this campaign isn’t so much anti-rugby, as it is pro other forms of entertainment.

“This was a really brave and smart move by the client to rebrand the channel as ‘The home of NOT Rugby’ in the face of the World Cup. But it paid off – they were the only mainstream channel to grow viewership over that period.”

The rebranded channel first grabbed New Zealand’s attention by floating a 40 foot yellow duck in Auckland Harbour a year ago (it’s currently in storage, in case you were wondering). One year on, and FOUR is claiming victory, celebrating record share results, over 103,000 facebook followers, and a hit new season of shows.

Rebranding FOUR was part of Jason Paris’s new two-channel strategy that also saw TV3 target the slightly older 25-54 year-olds. FOUR went after a broader audience, and the programming strategy reflected this. Popular shows like The Simpsons and America’s Next Top Model migrated to FOUR, and new programmes such as The Glee Project premiered on it. The strategy worked a treat.

FOUR finished its first year on air with a stellar January performance, growing its share of the 18-49 peak audience by 67 percent when compared with C4’s performance in January 2010. The channel also saw a 41 percent year-on-year growth in the November-January quarter.

FOUR is also leading the way in the social media realm, and is ‘NZ’s most liked TV channel’ with more than 103,000 facebook fans – well over twice the number of followers of any other free-to-air channel. TVNZ’s U channel, which is totally run by social media, has only 35,000 fans.

Credits: 

Agency: Special Group

Creative directors – Rob Jack & Tony Bradbourne

Creative – Kim Fraser

Managing partner – Michael Redwood

Account director – Annabel Rees

Head of Marketing MediaWorks TV – Amanda Wilson

Brand Manager FOUR – Renee Colquhoun

Marketing FOUR – Gary Mulholland

 

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The home of NOT rugby

 

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