Love Island: when fan engagement, sponsorship and commerce got it on
As Love Island 2018 draws to a close this week in the UK, millions of Brits are fidgeting anxiously. Yes, they’re wondering who will win the show, but more so they’re trying to figure out what they’ll do with themselves every night at 9pm.
The reality show has had an impact on popular British and Irish culture which for many has come as a surprise. How could a TV show become so relevant to young people, when TV is supposed to be dead? Somehow, a reality show has once again captured the country’s attention and, alongside the World Cup and the heatwave, formed part of a very special summer.
As audiences have grown over its three seasons, so have Love Island app installs and digital engagement. Alongside social channels, millions use the Love Island app to vote, interact with “Massive Polls” (tune in, you’ll get it eventually), and consume exclusive content such as the daily First Look clips and fantastic new Podcasts, designed to be listened to with your Kelloggs Cornflakes every morning.
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Using push notifications to drive spikes of engagement both during and outside of the TV show, fans use the app to immerse themselves in steamy, delicious Love Island content. What’s not to love?
We at Monterosa provide all of ITV’s TV show apps and in 2017, we trial-launched our new “Show Stores” service with Love Island. The Show Stores service provides an end-to-end eCommerce solution embedded into fan engagement apps, websites or chatbots. It includes the entire user journey baked into the fan engagement product. We take the user from point of interaction all the way to check-out, while providing full product sourcing, warehousing, personalisation, fulfilment and customer support.
This makes the whole process simple for media or sports businesses with better things to do than spin up eCommerce businesses for each of their properties. The benefit of doing it themselves is that they capture more of the margin and retain control over the fan experience.
Last year in its debut appearance, Monterosa Show Stores in partnership with ITV sold thousands of slogan T-shirts, phone covers and over 100,000 personalised water bottles to fans via the app; converting ‘free’ engagement to hard revenue via an omni-present Shop tab and additional TV advertising support.
Introducing the Interactive Shopper
In addition to providing incremental revenue, the shop’s success proved that passionate digital audiences were also ‘interactive shoppers’, prepared to impulse-buy products that appear on the show with just a few taps. Where products are present visually on all screens, culturally relevant, and within discretionary spend limits, people will buy in large quantities.
The existence of this ‘interactive shopper’ audience was not lost on Missguided, the youth fashion retailer. They’ve partnered with ITV to become the show’s main fashion retail partner, providing clothes to the show itself via product placement, and activating around it.
As The Guardian covered in June, ITV deployed our ‘Click to Buy’ capability within the app as a dedicated “Island Style” area, letting fans buy what they see on the show instantly from the app.
“The reality TV show and fast fashion brand Missguided have coupled up to offer instant ways to shop the clothes worn by the contestants. Could this be the future of shopping?” — The Guardian, July 2018
The partnership has been a resounding success. MissGuided’s Chief Customer Officer, Kenyatte Nelson, reports that the brand has seen upwards of a 40% increase in multichannel sales every night the reality show is on.
“Even on the first day the show aired, our trade — particularly from around the hours of 7pm to midnight — saw an increase of around 40% week on week and its trajectory has been ratcheting up ever since, it hasn’t slowed.” Kenyatte Nelson, as interviewed by Marketing Week.
Fan Engagement + Sponsorship + eCommerce = The Future?
The collision of entertainment with commerce is by no means new, but rarely does an example emerge with such clear lines of connectivity and success. With another year of explosive growth for the show, the official Shop and now for Missguided, the potential of fan engagement, sponsorship with impulse purchasing is now indisputable. We’re thrilled to be part of it and looking forward to applying our technology and services to other great ideas in entertainment and sports.
To learn more about how Monterosa / Interaction Cloud helps brands, media companies and sports organisation drive engagement, audience data and eCommerce, get in touch.
