How UKTV’s Cher campaign sought to soar above ‘faceless’ streamers
The Media Plan
UKTV’s biggest-ever paid media campaign, which featured Cher singing I Got You Babe to launch the broadcaster’s U masterbrand, was driven by a focus on landing an emotional connection with viewers.
Havas Entertainment, which planned the cross-channel campaign that launched in July, devised a media plan that would be “grounded in personality” after identifying broadcast competitors as having a “content-led” approach to promote “faceless functional platforms”.
“Our activation focus was on standout and attention-first formats that would deliver the required national cut-through and drive word of mouth,” Alex Sherr, managing partner at Havas Entertainment, told The Media Leader.
Proud of Bauer tie-up
The activity included a 60-second TV ad, with Cher making surprise appearances in UKTV programmes while singing a reworked version of Sonny & Cher classic I Got You Babe. The hero spot ran on ITV, Channel 4 and Sky, as well as UKTV’s linear channels and on its YouTube, Facebook and TikTok channels. It was developed by UKTV’s in-house creative shop in partnership with HunkyDory Films.
To create an unmissable launch day, 30% of the entire campaign’s investment was spent on day one alone. This included an integrated partnership with Bauer Media consisting of a day of features, segments, live reads and interviews with key talent across Absolute Radio, Magic Radio and Greatest Hits Radio, which all got a temporary rebrand featuring the “U&” prefix.
Indeed, the Bauer tie-up was highlighted as a particular source of pride for the planners.
“We have worked with Bauer in the past, but never to create such a standout and unmissable tentpole moment such as this; roadblocking and renaming such iconic and vast-reaching stations truly was the perfect way to effectively launch the new U player at scale,” Sherr explained.
“Having such a close relationship with the stations, talent and editorial teams allowed for a seamless integration and organic narrative that landed the desired comms and messaging flawlessly. The listener interaction and engagement that always tied back to content on U and personalised recommendations about what to watch is a testament to this.”
Awareness mission
The main challenge was to raise awareness for the new masterbrand U, having identified that its predecessor UKTV Play had an “OK” level of awareness and usage.
To find out whether it has been successful in raising awareness, Havas used custom “always-on” brand tracking, as well as YouGov’s Brand Index, to measure uplift and shifts across other key media.
Havas said it also negotiated below-the-line scores across all elements of the plan to offer a richer deep dive and understanding of the impact and attribution from each partner and activation. The planning team is also keeping a close eye on downloads of the U app, as well as installs and registrations.
On launch day, the app yielded 15,000 new registrations — the highest in UKTV history and 10% of the broadcaster’s three-month post-launch target.
U-Ston?
And just think about what could have been.
When asked to tell The Media Leader what was the biggest sacrifice that had to be made, Sherr revealed an intriguing idea that would create the UK’s biggest karaoke screen.
An earlier iteration of the plan included a full-station takeover of London Euston (hence ‘U-Ston’) and turning JCDecaux’s giant Motion+ screen into a karaoke device to encourage passers-by to sing along to I Got You Babe.