Over the last year, one new tech company has moved very fast whilst standing still.
Peloton has made waves with its static workout bike that is married with live and on-demand head-mounted video exercise instructions.
Not just for its product model, Peloton has also found itself nestled amongst the growing crop of “direct-to-consumer” (D2C) retailers.
According to a new report from VAB, 125 D2C companies analyzed increased their spending on TV ads by 60% last year, reaching an aggregate $3.8 billion.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Alan Smith, Vice President of Acquisition Marketing & Global Media at Peloton Interactive, starts pedaling to explain his approach to marketing the offering.
Smith says his strategy started using Facebook video units, but soon graduated to 30-second TV spots. Peloton also uses Horizon Media to get daily data on ad effectiveness, recalibrating campaigns on a weekly or monthly basis.
And then something really cool. “We do an enormous amount of kind of creative pretesting before we put something into market,” Smith explains. “So, in a lot of cases actually, what we find is we have the highest performing spots of any brand out there, in pretesting, before we actually put it into market.”
Peloton’s Smith starts by testing 30-second ads against 15-second versions. Once the company has hit on the right recipe, it deploys the creative, but continues customizing calls to action at the end of the ad.
Those ads are principally placed in national media, sometimes tested in local first, and often aligned with sports broadcasts.
“I think the stigma around TV not being measurable is not true, and I think there’s a lot that you can measure and understand and optimize, even beyond what happens in digital,” Smith says. “Embrace that and give it a shot.”
This video is from a Beet.TV ‘s coverage of the VAB’s Direct to Consumer summit held on June 12 at Viacom in New York City. Please visit this page for more segments.
