StopPress recently ran a story on how BuzzFeed is making moves in the Australasian market. And while most of the list-making juggernaut’s activities are focused on the other side of the ditch, Kiwi businesses are also starting to experiment with the company’s unique brand of native advertising, which holds such reverence for the power of the .gif.
In the comments section of StopPress’ Andy Wiedlin interview, OMD managing partner Andrew Reinholds pointed out that two of his clients, Sky TV and the NZTA, had collaborated with BuzzFeed on native advertising projects.
In the case of Sky, the creative team at BuzzFeed has created two movie-related lists in the last week that point to some of the benefits that come with staying in and watching films at home.
The first, titled ‘13 signs you’re an emotional movie watcher‘, essentially gives readers 13 reasons why it might be a good idea for them watch films at home rather than in a public space. This theme is then also carried over into the second list, which gives readers a rundown of ‘12 reasons why your home is the best movie theatre‘.
“We’ve been working with Buzzfeed for a while now to bring our SKY Movies campaign to life, and finally the posts are live,” says Reinholds. “With this placement we want to reach movie lovers, who either go to the cinema often or who typically stream movies illegally. Buzzfeed has been selected to drive word of mouth and to help change the somewhat negative perception of the Sky Movies offering from ‘lots of repeats, old movies, uncool’ to ‘great value, not that uncool’ – whilst delivering to one of Sky’s key brand values of being seen as innovative.”
This innovative approach that Reinholds refers to was also seen recently in Sky’s Facebook campaign, which was based on a similar premise to ASB’s ‘Like Loan’—with the prize growing with every like, share and comment—and eventually led to the broadcaster giving away 1,605 days, 23 hours and 37 minutes (over four years) of free Sky.
While the Sky campaigns are interesting, neither of them are targeted specifically at Kiwi audiences; they are broader messages, which the broadcaster hopes will get shared around.
However, when it came to the NZTA campaign, OMD was briefed to reach a very specific group of Kiwis.
“[We were briefed to target] casual, social pot smokers, who have enjoyed a smoke since high school and love a Sunday session with mates – enjoy browsing the internet for a laugh, and really appreciate that mate who forwards them the hilarious links,” says Reinholds.
To reach this target market, the NZTA’s creative agency Clemenger BBDO developed the ‘Tinnyvision’ campaign, which followed the antics of a group of guys on Snapchat.
While this campaign was running, OMD collaborated with BuzzFeed to cerate the list called ‘These snaps prove New Zealand wins at Snapchat,’ which provided a compilation of some of the ‘Tinnyvision’ crew’s shenanigans.
Reinholds explains that this social media-centric approach was employed because the NZTA didn’t want to chastise the audience when delivering the message.
“The target audience (25- to 34-year-old New Zealanders) doesn’t want to hear from the government—to have the finger pointed at them, to be told off,” says Reinholds. “In unsettling their confidence we needed to be respectful and credible and partner with publishers that ‘got this’. BuzzFeed specialises in creating engaging and highly shareable content. Our research showed that their audience and site content lent itself perfectly to our content and sat well within our target demographic.They also have a very strong mobile audience which was a key component to our campaign – the perfect environment to seed the Tinnyvision story.”
As with any BuzzFeed list, the success of these campaigns will be measured in terms how much they are shared and read. However, at this stage, Reinholds says that the results of the campaigns are confidential.
