Fancast Launch

The online video market has exploded with the arrival of Hulu.com. The immensely popular service had a head start on the market and regularly attracts 10m visitors each month, who stream more than 300m videos between them. Any new video streaming provider would have quite a battle ahead to compete with Hulu. But that didn’t deter Fancast.

Statistics showed that US TV is watched by more women than men. In almost every category, women are the predominant audience, apart from films, sport and late-night viewing. Hulu on the otherhand appealed to a predominantly younger, digitally aware, male audience. Fancast spotted the opportunity to position itself as the online television provider to the digitally unaware – the technically uninitiated. Essentially, Fancast wanted to be a more accessible version of Hulu.

Consumer research revealed that heavy television viewers were reluctant to shift technology platforms. The more involved they are with one platform, the less likely they are to seek out alternatives. With this in mind, Fancast chose to eschew the common strategy of targeting “early adopters” and instead focus on spreading awareness of its ease of use amongst its target audience.

Fancast’s own research showed that consumers only needed to use the service once to become convinced of its simplicity. This meant that provided the gap between the technology and the user could be closed, conversion would be fast.

Recognising that their target audience needed to see Fancast in action, and that common media touch points were needed that could demonstrate the speed, simplicity and facility of Fancast, it was decided to employ interactive digital bus shelters. Pedestrians and commuters were able to text tin the show they’d like to view and then watch it on a 50-inch television screen mounted in a bus shelter. TV spots were placed in prime-time season premieres, and online banner executions featured key scenes from popular programs. These scenes would end on a dramatic cliff-hanger, directing viewers to click through the banner to watch the rest of the episode online.

Consumer response to Fancast was swift. Unique visitor numbers rose 290% year-on-year. Behind Yahoo and AOL, Fancast established itself as the third most popular online television site in its category.