Overview
Raising awareness among a younger demographic, outside of the traditional Remembrance period
Services: Programmatic, Paid Social
Markets: UK
The challenge
As part of a wider push to raise awareness among a younger demographic, outside of the traditional Remembrance period, the Royal British Legion launched a nationwide TV campaign: ‘They still go’. The campaign was designed to remind the nation of both the extraordinary and selfless work of the Armed Forces and the support that the Royal British Legion provides the Armed Forces community.
Croud’s aim was to amplify the impact and reach of the ‘They still go’ campaign through paid activity on key channels – namely Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube thanks to their reach amongst our target audience.
The Croud difference
In order to make the campaign as impactful as possible, we developed a full-funnel strategy, broken down into two phases. Phase one was all about driving reach among a broad audience, whilst phase two aimed to drive stronger engagement with our core target audience.
To start with, we targeted UK-based 25-44-year-olds with interest categories aligned to the TV channels and shows in which the advert was being shown, showing them short clips from the TV ad. Sequential messaging was key to the success of the campaign, so we took a very granular approach to segmentation, to optimise reach and engagement at each stage.
Adopting a test and learn approach, we applied learnings from phase one to drive even better results in phase two. This included using shorter videos, which delivered a better click-through rate; testing up-front branding in order to strengthen the association between the ads and the Legion; and utilising a wider range of ad formats.
The results
Overall, our tailored approach to messaging and creative was a resounding success. Over the course of the campaign, we reached 16.5m people across YouTube, Facebook and Instagram (+36% above target), and drove 84,900 users to the Legion’s website (+69% above target). And all of this whilst being 22% under budget.
The campaign was also successful in specifically targeting a younger demographic: 25-44-year-olds made up 58.8% of website visitors off the back of the campaign, compared with 36.6% of all website traffic.
The campaign was also supported by a brand lift study on Facebook, designed to help us understand the extent to which the ads had an impact on our audience’s perception of the Royal British Legion. The brand lift study revealed a 5.3 point increase in favourability among the group who had been exposed to our ads, equating to an estimated brand lift of 332,000 people.
people reached
people - estimated brand lift
The success of the campaign is testament to Croud’s innovative and adaptive strategy. By utilising clever tactics and brand uplift studies, we were able to closely monitor performance and drive impressive results.
Director of Marketing, The Royal British Legion