Sling TV's Repostioning
Defining Sling's purpose beyond price to drive growth.
RESULTS
OVERVIEW
Sling TV had a problem not dissimilar to many brands. They couldn't justify the investment in brand marketing because it appeared to be contrary to growth. We had a difficult task on our hands as the brand team; to prove why investing in defining what Sling stands for matters.
The LAY OF THE LAND
Sling was the originator of the world of streaming television, and when competition increased, the brand positioning turned to being the "best price"
WHERE IT WENT WRONG
The belief that being the best price was "unique" was objectively true but it did not build distinctiveness long-term. We proved this through BERA (our research partner) who assess a brand's potential for long-term growth via their tomorrow score. In 2022 and 2023 we saw significant decreases which added fuel to our fire that zeroing in on price was not the way to position our brand.
To prove why this mattered to leadership, we analyzed that our "uniqueness" score is the brand metric most closely tied to monthly activations. It's a leading indicator with 99% correlation when looked at via a 5 month in-market lag.
We dove in further to the underlying characteristics of our tomorrow score and we saw the sharpest decrease in the "5Ps"
Shockingly to some, the largest decrease within the 5Ps (and that's the last of this Russian nesting doll, I promise) was on price. One of the issues with focusing so heavily on price is that any time you have a price increase, outages, etc. standing for price exacerbates the impact of those experiences.
The brief
So, we set out for a new "big idea" to right the ship.
Business Challenge: Live TV is declining in popularity
Business Objective: Increase GAs and MAUs to sling by broadening our product ecosystem to include a free TV service
Communication Objective: Position Sling as the streaming service that puts people in charge of their entertainment
Audience Pain Point: People are over-paying for content they don't watch
How Sling Solves It: Give people unparalleled choice over their content
CONCEPT
"Sling Lets You Do That", in partnership with our agency WorkInProgress, put people in charge of their entertainment in a unique and impactful way. It excelled across every metric in testing and was flexible to work for cord-cutters (cable users) all the way down to people who need live TV for one day to watch a big game,.
PRODUCT EXPERIENCE
Our advertising was one step, but we needed our product to live up to putting people in charge of their entertainment as well.
Previously our free TV service was an afterthought, but we grew it from thousands to millions of MAUs by not attempting to hold subscribers past their need in our paid plans but leaning into "Free TV in the offseason".
Sling Passes were ideated during my time, and executed after. It was a first of its kind subscription model offering everything from 1 day to 3 month prepay options. Nobody had done passes like this, allowing unprecedented control for customers.
We launched the first ever rewards program in live TV where users could earn discounts, prizes, and more with no subscription required.
