01
WHAT WE DID
There’s never been a better time to be Which?
Which? is a British Institution. An organization founded by the people for the people. Whilst it is popular amongst its core audience it needed to engage a younger audience to ensure future success.While prompted awareness of the brand was high, spontaneous awareness was incredibly low. Everyone knew of Which? but no one knew why. In a period of time flooded with Fake News, misinformation, and mistrust of large organizations it seemed as though, if there was ever a moment when Which? could establish its place in the world, then this was it.
Get Which? noticed
We constructed a communications architecture for the brand outlining how it needed to behave to overcome the business issues it was facing not just a plan designed to ‘reach’ people. We identified that it needed to be provocative: it needed to pick a fight – preferably with the biggest bloke in the pub. It needed to be relevant: finding a way to link the brand with the wider context to drive better understanding, and it need to enable the performance media to then convert that understanding into interest. Perhaps most importantly we identified that the brand needed some swagger – it needed to get its confidence back. We needed to use communications and the right partnerships to enable this to happen. We needed to be ‘noticed’ not just ‘seen’.
‘Which? is fortunate to have lots of highly motivated staff working across its comms and content teams, but we’re really at our best when those teams are pulling together. The fake reviews campaigns provided a platform for Which? to really show it’s best features. It was original Which? investigations that provided the evidence to underpin the campaign, and generated fantastic impact through earned and owned media to compliment the creative running across paid channels. Having a really clear media strategy meant that everyone understood what we were trying to do and could contribute. The combined impact of our work not only raised the profile of Which?, it also put fake reviews on the public agenda. It’s rewarding for everyone working on the campaign to see the payoff with Which? being quoted everywhere and people talking about our work.”
Michael Moruzzi Head of Marketing Planning
Pick a fight with the enemy
Our fight was with Fake Reviews. We focused the Autumn campaign around Black Friday jumping on the back of a retail and PR moment, ensuring that when the world wanted to talk about the price of everything we refocused the conversation around real value. To support we developed an integrated partnership with LBC Radio. A station built on having an opinion. We incorporated our Which? experts into every show across the station to deliver a Which? point of view on current topics of conversation. We partnered with the Consumer Show, allowing us to co-create the editorial of the weekly show and demonstrate our credible, impartial advice on relatable consumer issues. This was under-lined with a broadcast sponsorship and a content machine to take the fight to social media. And then for our second act in Spring we aligned with the editorial team to reveal the extent of fake reviews on Amazon: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47941181
Use context to drive relevancy and sampling to drive conversion
Our campaign timings were planned around the 2 biggest spending occasions in the UK and our messaging tailored to feature the products we knew were driving most interest to
Which? across the different time periods (e.g.TVs in Autumn and lawnmowers at Easter). Media was planned on ‘notice’ and not on ‘reach’. Which meant we planned large formats in OOH and built in frequency to our plan on radio & OOH deliberately to 4+ designed to affect our brand values not just awareness scores.We created a unique sampling moment by opening the Which? App for free - to allow everyone to appreciate the value of Which? over Black Friday and continued to use it as an access point to Which? across the Spring.
