Sky aims to ‘recapture hearts and minds’ in major ad push

Sky is forgoing its usual product-led approach in a new marketing campaign that aims to build an emotional connection with customers and get people thinking differently about the business.

Sky is launching a major new marketing campaign for its TV business that will see its messaging shift from a focus on product and features to one that aims to put customers “back at the heart” and shift perceptions of the brand.

The new communications platform, ‘Everything you love, all in one place, easy’, aims to position Sky TV, and in particular its Sky Q product, as the go-to for content whether customers want to watch something from Sky, YouTube, Netflix or Disney+. Having tried to find a “silver bullet” answer to the question of what TV means to people, marketing director Sunny Bhurji says the real insight is that there is not one answer.

With that in mind, Sky will launch of a series of ads over the next year that focus on different people and their relationship with TV. The first ad, created by in-house agency Sky Creative Agency and which airs on TV from today (23 October), features a young boy called Harris who is obsessed with robots.

The spot follows him as he collects his favourite entertainment, including Ironman and BB8 from Star Wars on Disney+, a robotic dog from Boston Dynamics on YouTube and Megatron from Transformers on Sky Cinema. The next spot will feature a protagonist in their early 20s, while later ads will again widen the range of people featured.

Speaking exclusively to Marketing Week, Bhurji says: “The key thing we wanted to do was put the customer back at the heart of our advertising. We’ve done a lot of product advertising, and that’s great… but we wanted to lean in on TV being part of you and showcasing part of you.”

Sky aims to ‘recapture hearts and minds’ in major ad push