Hi community!
Hope you're all good. For those of you I haven't chatted to yet, I'm Rayelle, Brand and Advertising Manager over at the gaff.
We have some exciting news to share with you this autumnal Thursday morning. The Voice on it's way back with giffgaff as it's sponsor! So we are currently working away on the creative approach for 2020, which we'd love to get you in on.
How we've approached The Voice sponsorship so far:
In previous years, we put the fans and our members at the front and centre by watching the show every Saturday night, chatting away on Twitter. From that, we took tweets and put them into our sponsorship idents - then on telly. We also went down to the The Voice Battle filmings in Manchester last year, and took some lovely photos of the fans that were there. We popped them in to our idents and we refreshed both the photos and tweets for every single ident, for every single episode. We made around 160 idents last year, (that's a lot!) each completely unique.
FYI - lingo buster: A sponsorship ident is the little clip that appears before the show starts, as the show goes in to an ad break and then goes back in to the show, then right at the very end. These clips features the lovely fans and members, tweets and photos, the voice over 'giffgaff proudly sponsors the voice' and our logo.
Sponsorship is a super effective way of making giffgaff more famous, encourage more people to join us but also celebrate our existing members and encourage them to stay! We take a unique approach to sponsorship. Doing so makes a lot of sense for us as a business, as research shows that appealing to audiences this way and ensuring our creative approach is consistent and engaging through out does increase the likelihood of people intending on purchasing giffgaff. Yay!
For The Voice 2020:
So, this year we have evolved our model even further from people sharing their thoughts on twitter and showing them on TV, to giving people a giffgaff soapbox to get up and have their say. This time, the British public can voice their thoughts themselves. The inspiration from this came from Speakers Corner in Hyde Park, where anyone can head to the corner, with a makeshift stand to have their say and be heard. So this really ramps up our approach to sponsorship in a fresh way for 2020. giffgaff gives you The Voice.
We'll be doing several photo shoots up and down the UK (exact locations are tbc) at different points between now and early next year, going to towns and villages that are often under heard. So see this as a chance to get yourself out there on prime time - Saturday night telly! We'll still be watching the show with the fans, having plenty of chats on social media and being just as part of the buzz as everyone else. We'll continue to make every ident unique and fresh each time, for every show.
We're filming all of this on refurbished phones (woohoo!), again a very unique approach to filming, but this means several things...
1) It signals to people that we are a mobile network and that we sell refurbished phones
2) Showcases the amazing benefits of buying a refurbished and saving your pennies at the same time
3) Means that the people being filmed will feel less weird when talking to camera, as it's a more natural set up rather than going to a big studio with a full on set and big camera. This will just be a giffgaff soap box* (think a large wooden crate), and a few of us giffgaffers, and our wonderful creative partners who came up with this idea - Made By Blah.
4) It means we can easily move around to different locations to make sure we capture as many people as possible.
*We've had the soapbox specially made for this, we have ensured the box is accessible to all. It is big and sturdy enough to cater for all needs, and has a ramp to allow for easy access for wheelchair, scooter or other mobility aid users. Making for a universal and inclusive platform for this concept.
The giffgaff Social Media team will be sharing lots of content on their channels to make sure we have a well rounded approach to sponsorship. Social Media and 2 way conversations play an integral part in our sponsorship campaigns. So watch this space!
How you can get involved:
Well, we're currently in Manchester filming at several locations, so if you'd like to be a part of it come down and see us! The easiest giffgaff teams to find will be at Media City - keep and eye out for a brightly coloured box with a few friendly faces nearby to it. We have teams moving around Manchester, this morning in the northern quarter, and Harpurhey Market this afternoon, Oct 17th, with more to come soon.
If anyone would like further info on where we'll be please comment on this thread and I'll do my best to keep you up to date - we'll update this when we have new dates and locations. If there's a slight delayed response, please forgive me and bear with!
We're harnessing the power of people, challenging the established ways and putting people at the heart of it!
The content will feel full of life, personality and capture the beauty that is the British public.
We are so proud of this concept, and can't wait for you to see it!
As soon as we have some sneaky peeks of clips to share with you, we will!
As always, let us know if you have any thoughts or questions.
Cheers! 🙂
