Streaming video-on-demand service CraveTV has launched a major marketing blitz highlighting its widespread availability and the depth and breadth of its programming.
The campaign coincides with the one-year-old service being made available to all Canadians. It follows a similar move by Shomi, the competing streaming service jointly owned by Shaw and Rogers, which was made available nationally last summer.
Both SVOD services were initially available only to their respective corporate parents’ TV and internet subscribers. However, the CRTC ordered they be opened up to the general public last year in the wake of the “Let’s Talk TV” hearings.
Jon Arklay senior vice-president of the Bell Media Agency, brand, creative and marketing, said CraveTV’s brand awareness after one year in the market is comparable to some 15-year-old TV brands. “We did promote the hell out of it on a mass scale,” said Arklay. “And there’s such an appetite for a service like Crave, it generated buzz.”
However, internal research also indicated it faced a “perception challenge,” with many consumers regarding it as a specialty TV channel rather than a streaming VOD service.
Arklay said many facets of the Crave business contributed to that consumer perception, most notably the fact it is only available as an add-on through TV providers.
“We really wanted to address that perception head-on and say ‘We are a streaming service first and foremost,'” said Arklay. “[Communicating] the ease of access and widespread availability are really our two core objectives.”
Arklay said Bell received a positive response from consumers when it promoted CraveTV at Fan Expo Canada in the fall. A newsletter informing prospective subscribers about the service was attracting more than 1,000 sign-ups per day at the beginning of the year, he said.
Created in-house by the Bell Media Agency, the new “Stream On” campaign – which is encouraging Canadians to sign up for a free one-month trial of CraveTV – includes TV, radio, out-of-home, digital and social media. It employs Aerosmith’s classic rock chestnut “Dream On” as its hook.
“[The song] was a perfect complement,” said Arklay. “Not just the play on words, but the whole tone and energy and aspirational nature of the song. It just ticked so many of the boxes, and “Dream On” and “Stream On” worked so perfectly.”
A 60-second brand spot showcases the broad array of content available on the service, ranging from new shows like Showtime’s Billions to iconic library titles such as The Sopranos and The Wire. Approximately 70% of CraveTV’s content is exclusive to the service, said Arklay.
Arklay said much of the strategy around the campaign is focused on efforts to reach viewers who consume TV content via non-traditional services such as, well, Crave. With that in mind, Bell has activated campaigns on social platforms including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, as well as sites including Twitch.tv and the movie and TV-related site IMDB.com.
They are being augmented by a building wrap of Bell’s 299 Queen St. W. headquarters in downtown Toronto, as well as what Arklay described as a “comprehensive” search marketing campaign. The company is also running transit shelter ads throughout the city.
Bell first began promoting CraveTV’s widespread availability late last year, with a particular emphasis on Billions and the upcoming series Letterkenny. The latter is a new series debuting this year on Comedy and CraveTV that grew out of a popular YouTube channel boasting more than 61,000 subscribers.
The company also plans to leverage the return of fan favourites such as Orphan Black by inviting viewers to catch-up on previous seasons using CraveTV, said Arklay.
The new campaign launches as streaming services become more entrenched in the viewing landscape. The U.S. service Netflix recently announced a simultaneous global launch that puts it in more than 130 countries around the world, and has been steadily rolling out attention-getting programming such as Making a Murderer.
“The exclusive deals we have with studios is critical and really differentiates us, and I think with our price point [$7.99] we’re very well positioned,” said Arklay.
