In June 2018, Blue 449 tasked us with a perception altering brief for British consumer electronics retailer ‘Currys PC World’ (CPCW), who were looking to connect with 18-35’s during the summer months and tackle any notions that they might be seen as outdated or uncool. Secondary to brand awareness, we were to drive consideration for the retailer as the go-to destination to purchase. The campaign marked CPCW’s first ever social content partnership and centred on key brand ‘JBL’ through the promotion of four items from their product range.

The consumer electronics retail market is a competitive one and traditionally, headphone, speaker and audio advertising can often be loud, bold and in your face. We wanted to strip back the noise and focus on storytelling to harness a different kind of emotion and give CPCW a new voice, set them apart from their competition and reposition them into the youth market.

We created a four-part video series, using four completely different cultural and iconic influencers to curate four distinctive ways of bringing each of the products to life. Each video was standalone with the product range the one constant tying the series together. To drive sales, further cut down edits from influencers featuring a second call to action were used for re-targeting custom audiences via paid social posts.

Our first video saw dance duo and ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ finalists ‘Twist & Pulse’ transforming a class of ‘Bad Dancers’ for a special public performance with the ‘JBL Flip’, the second, challenged former ‘Love Island’ stars ‘Kem Cetinay’ and ‘Chris Hughes’ to a blind baking competition using the ‘JBL Link’, the third, witnessed cultural influencer in his own right, Bradley Gunn Raver, dancing around London with a ‘JBL Charge 3 Speaker’ and finally, the fourth, the hero piece of content, featured the most iconic figure from ‘Channel 4’s Educating Yorkshire’, ‘Mushy Asghar’, explaining how music and headphones helped him overcome his stammer - featuring ‘JBL Wireless Bluetooth Headphones’.

For our feature piece, we reunited Mushy with his teacher Mr Burton, who, in the Educating Yorkshire episode from 2013, was inspired to set his student on a path to recovery after watching The King’s Speech. The film portrays Lionel Logue, an Australian speech and language therapist, who used music to help King George VI with his stammer. The concept presented a big challenge. It was imperative that we handled this video sensitively. Get it right and give the campaign the best possible chance to succeed, get it wrong and run the risk of coming across as inauthentic and insincere. The piece also proves that you don’t always need influencers with millions of followers to succeed. If the story is there and the values align you’ve got every chance to cut-through on social.

The campaign claimed the title of ‘Number 1 Branded Content Campaign in the world’ in Q3 for an electronics brand (Tubular Labs), with 16M impressions, 10.5M reach, 5M+ views, 31.5k engagements (of which 98% were positive) and an extra 25.5k clickthrough’s to JBL product pages.

The activity contributed to a significant uplift in audio sales year on year with CPCW overall headphones sales up +18.3% YoY, JBL speaker sales up +18.4% YoY and JBL growth up +239.8% in terms of SRV.

Follow up research via Sapio was conducted on 500 respondents. Importantly, the research showed that all panellists were able to identify the distinguishing features of each JBL product in the videos. Other key takeaways included an extremely strong consumer consideration for CPCW across the board with over 2 in 5 (41%) rating the videos as an 8 or more out of 10. For our lead video with Mushy Asghar, this figure rose to 60% with a further 41% more likely to spend with the retailer after watching.

“This was the first campaign I’ve worked on with The Hook and they certainly didn’t disappoint. They produced 4 unique videos that were incredibly compelling and led to a significant uplift in audio sales year on year, whilst simultaneously proving that social content doesn’t always have to be funny to be engaging. The campaign was an incredible achievement considering the time restraints, and will be used as a benchmark of all future social campaigns.”

Harry Bradshaw – CPCW Marketing Manager

“We loved how creative the concepts provided by The Hook were. They know exactly what would resonate best with the audience, and how to integrate our products in a way that felt natural, fun and engaging. Having the possibility to be involved in the follow up story with Mushy or in a blind-folded baking competition between Chris and Kem was priceless!”

Simona Bara, Head of Marketing JBL

7x WINNERS

Brand Film Festival with Campaign 2019:

• Most Emotional Film (GOLD)
• Brand Documentary (SILVER)
• Consumer Goods (SILVER)

The British Media Awards:

• Video project of the year

The Drum Online Media Awards 2019:

• Best use of Social Media

The Shorty Awards 2019:

• Best influencer & celebrity brand partnership on Facebook (People's Choice)

The Webby Awards 2019:

• Advertising Media & PR / Social Video (Honouree)

8x NOMINEES

Campaign Media Awards 2019:

• Best Social Strategy

Digiday Video Awards 2019:

• Best Social Video Campaign

The Drum Marketing Awards:

• Best Use of Social
• Best Branded Content

Digiday Media Awards Europe:

• Best Original Series
• Best Use of Social
• Best Use of Video
• Partnership of the year