Last december (2009), I was fortunate enough to attend a small conference in London, Noah Conference, focused on Internet-related growth companies. It was a real breeze of air, with companies in "boring" sectors, doing fantastically well, with clear business models and execution. Many of them really impressed me, reinventing how to sell tires online, gold online, downloads, etc.
In these days of the World Cup, I'll just mention Kentara / Perform's campaign to bring online the 1st and largest pay per view live streaming of a UK football match. All major TVs refused it (although they felt it could target 8-10m unique viewers), so they went themselved and marketed it as www.UkraineVEngland.com.
They brought a fantastic 360 marketing approach including :
- buy-in (free advertising and promotion) from all top UK newspapers (with rev-share)
- deals with betting companies (a UK specialty until now), including bet365
- press conference, interviews on press, radio, TV
- online emailing
- online affiliation
- distribution with cinema theaters
- deals with ISPs (Orange, Virgin Media)
- 11th hour deal with the BBC for highlights, etc.
Watch the presentation below:
They did not give financials onstage, but with prices at £4.99, £9.99 and £11.99 pounds, including free streaming to armed forces and bet365 new sign-ups, we can guesstimate a 6-8 pounds average income per user ?Multiply that by the close to 600K users who watched it eventually, the operation brought in £3.6m-£4.8m on this operation. Not bad for one operation, that could be repeated regularly.
That said, I'm going back to Noah this year for inspiring speeches by successful entrepreneurs.