StopPress sat down with Kathryn Blackmore, Sales & Partnerships Manager at MetService, to hear about how bespoke partnerships can help change consumers’ behaviour.
StopPress: Tell us about your audience.
Kathryn Blackmore: We have a huge audience: every month about 2.9 million New Zealanders check the MetService app or website. Every day, over 500,000 people check their forecast – usually multiple times.
MetService helps people make decisions about their day: what to wear, if they should hang out the washing…
KB: Yes. We’ve got a Laundry Drying Index on site, because viewers requested that. We knew our audience wanted to know: should I put the washing out today or when the next sunny day would be. We introduced the content with an advertising partner who wanted to sell dryers – so every time it rained, we’d trigger a message that said: time to buy a new dryer.
There’s all kinds of things that we can do like that. We’ve done quite a few and they work really well. Our team love working on them because it’s unique, outside the box stuff, and we’ve won a number of awards for this innovative approach.
How did the Tradies Index come about?
KB: Also through an advertising partner. We cover off concreting, landscaping, framing… with triggered messages around whether the weather is suitable to do that work that day or whether tradies should plan deliveries instead.
We love providing content that helps people in their everyday life planning, and adds real value. We get a lot of requests from our audience for content like this.
What about education?
KB: Our platform is a great place for public education campaigns because it’s a trusted source of information. We’re serving your brand information or message to people in a way that helps change attitudes and behaviours – without people feeling they’re being lectured.
Maritime New Zealand came to MetService a couple of years ago, after Ipsos data showed kayakers and paddleboarders weren’t consulting marine information before heading out.
When we went through the data, we realised so many New Zealanders didn’t understand they needed to check a specific marine forecast. They were just checking a town forecast. Essentially: “It’s sunny, I’m out on my paddleboard with the kids.”
People didn’t know about offshore and onshore winds – and the impact on marine activities. They didn’t understand knots compared to wind in kilometres.
We’ve recently completed this big piece of work with Maritime NZ which saw a 34% increase year on year in people checking a marine forecast instead of a town forecast.
Tell me about the work with Fire & Emergency.
KB: We have had some great social good partnerships over the last three years that have produced key attitude and behavioural change in New Zealanders.
In New Zealand, 98% of all wildfires are caused by humans, which is very different to other countries around the world. We’ve delivered fire danger and fire season messages within people’s daily weather feed for the last few years: For example: don’t park your car in long grass during extreme drought or mowing your lawn today could cause a fire. In a user survey, people told us they thought all those things were safe to do.
As a result of serving daily Fire Danger and Fire Season information in people’s daily weather feed, Fire & Emergency saw a huge number of people checking their ‘Can I light a fire in my area?’ tool.
That’s so cool. Is this work being recognised?
KB: We’ve won quite a number of awards for this bespoke content. At the recent IAB Awards, Samsung Cloud Cover forecast via Spark Foundry won two silvers and our ongoing work with Greater Wellington Regional Council (Metlink) was a finalist.
What’s next?
KB: We are about to bring another 2000 locations to MetService desktop and mobile platforms.
Previously the areas were broader: for Coromandel, you’d be looking at Thames, but now we’re going to drill that right down. For example you’ll now have Whangamatā, Whitianga. People want specific location forecasts, so we’re delivering that.
It also allows us to put special messages on there to reach more people, make it more specific and give them really personalised, hyper-local content. I think they’ll be really well received by the public and advertisers alike.
Are you looking forward to summer?
KB: Very much. We’ve just gone live with our Barbecue forecast onsite.
Oh, love this!
