Captivate is the largest on-the-go news and entertainment network in North America, reaching influential audiences in the places they work and live.
With a major expansion in their network, reach, and audience, we set out to tell a new story about how Captivate can help brands and advertisers reach an engaged, captive, multi-faceted audience.
During the pandemic, Captivate was forced to rethink its business and audience, expanding outside of their media presence within office building elevators.
Captivate rapidly expanded to over ~4M households in luxury residential towers, a great complement to their office building network.
With a new offering, Captivate needed a new story.
We developed a break-thru strategy and positioning, built from customer research, validated in-market.
We then equipped the Captivate team with a new narrative about our unique and influential audience.
In delving deep into our audience's mindset, we discovered that they underestimated the power of Captivate’s platform.
Why? It turns out media companies, Captivate included, struggle to articulate their value proposition effectively. Out-of-home providers prioritize the 'wow factor,' digital brands emphasize functionality, and news outlets tell a story.
That left us an opportunity to tell a story about influence and impact — something that agencies and brands genuinely prioritize and value.
We felt great about our new strategy, but we needed to ensure it resonated with Captivate’s audience. Using our proprietary “words that work” methodology, we aimed to understand customer motivations through real-world digital marketing experimentation.
This involved testing and iterating audience, message, and creative variants across channels. We began with qualitative interviews to guide our messaging, followed by quantitative research to identify key audience demographics and behaviors. From these insights, we developed our Ideal Customer Profile personas and built representative audiences on digital platforms.
Full-funnel audits established baselines and improvement opportunities, and we used Google and LinkedIn ad accounts for targeted campaigns. In three testing sprints, we produced dozens of multivariate messages and new landing pages, uncovering the winning audience/message pairs.
We then armed and energized the Captivate marketing and sales team with a compelling new story and new assets to tell brands and advertisers how Captivate can help them engage and influence hard-to-reach audiences.
And finally, we took action on customer feedback asking for creative support from Captivate to help make their campaigns more engaging and successful. So we developed “Lift” a creative studio from Captivate, powered by Creature.
We tested and validated our new value proposition through in-market tests, using Google, Linkedin, and Meta ads to determine what brands and advertisers cared about most: Influencing influential audiences in brand safe, impactful environments.
We then armed and energized the Captivate marketing and sales team with a compelling new story and new assets to tell brands and advertisers how Captivate can help them engage and influence hard-to-reach audiences.
It's your defining moment to live, grow, evolve, and transcend.
