Burrow launches TV advertisement

Only 10 months into launching our online mortgage broker Burrow, we knew running our first TV ad would be a challenge.

TV time is notoriously expensive but we were sure we could find something to fit our budget if we were smart (much like finding a mortgage!). Bootstrapping is in our DNA and we are constantly trying to gain the maximum amount of learnings as fast as possible for the lowest amount of spend.

Why TV?

We’ve always been interested in increasing the number of channels that allows us to communicate our message to our audience and, with many marketing experiments coming to an end, now was the perfect time to dip our collective toes in the water to see what learnings we could gain. Many were sceptical that we would be able to achieve anything.

For anyone thinking about creating their own TV ad, the pros may be obvious — reaching a larger audience, and there are alternative creative approaches to express our CPBs (customer’s perceived benefits) of Burrow. All very different from digital marketing channels which is where I have focused most of my career.

Of course there are also drawbacks to consider — tracking can be more difficult and you often need a large amount of visibility to create a memorable impact. Production costs do add up — you may have to hire scriptwriters, actors, video editors, plus any changes can involve redoing key aspects which would simply augment costs. Our budget was limited.

How did we do it?

To combat one of these issues we called in a favour from the brother of our Head of Mortgages. Torri Stewart, with almost 2 decades worth of experience in the industry, helped develop and execute the ad, and gave us valuable insight into the whole process, at a fraction of the cost you’d expect to pay. The value of Torri’s contribution can not be understated.

We also ran several experiments on Facebook and YouTube to test creatives and ad messages. This helped us choose the variant with the greatest view through rate and increase our confidence that the final version was the one most customers would respond to.

The area that we play in, which is financial services, has a lot of noise and several messaging positions are already occupied. For example, we couldn’t communicate our proposition effectively if we attempted to occupy the same space as many banks (ie happy couple who have just received the keys to their home). We certainly did not want to get mistaken for the traditional financial service providers whatsoever.

We know our customers were finding the process of getting a mortgage via Burrow simple and the feedback we were getting was that it allowed them to focus on other bits and bobs, knowing that we were taking care of the mortgage process. They were pretty chilled, confident and excited about the process rather than stressed out. This became a valuable insight that led to a distinguished positioning around putting the borrower in control.

The 11th hour

With our add nearly complete we were feeling pretty good — this was a real milestone for Burrow and we were excited for people to see the finished product. But something wasn’t working. We’d completed the script, ensured our timings were as needed and tested this across friends, family and a small external audience. We had the cool-as-a-cucumber kangaroo and loud ‘owning-it’ music, but there was something missing. We needed a voice over.

Everyone was pitching in to save costs so we went looking for the best recording voice in the office. After going through several options (including me — listen here) we settled on one of our mortgage experts Guiseppe. This is him:

Despite all the changes — and thanks to the patient team — we pulled it together and the ad went live 1 day after our intended launch date.

Watch the ad here:

The channels that we ended up targeting was More4, Discovery, Sky (Home, Living) and Eden. The minimum combined impacts we are expecting is north of 1.2 million and around 200 spots.

The total cost of this was under £10,000 and included the creative development, media buy, and the various production requirements.

And we’ve already had some great responses and are positive about future and potential learnings.

If you would like to know more about our process or have any comments, please do let me know!

Written by Bradley Fehler