An Englishmans home is his castle, so the saying goes and according to the Dream Homes Report at the centre of this campaign for Standard Life Bank, more and more of us are doing our utmost to edge our own little castles nearer to the dream home that weve always wanted.
Coverage of celebrities’ homes in magazines and an increase in property shows on television have meant that we are spoilt for choice in terms of ideas and inspiration for our own homes. But according to the survey, nearly half of the population felt that a lack of funds was holding them back from creating their dream home. So, as well as providing an appealing spokesperson who could inform the public on ways to improve their homes, the campaign also needed to inform people of ways in which they might use the equity in their property to make their dreams come true.
Consolidated Communications provided Ashley Ramsay, Standard Life Bank’s trend expert alongside Naomi Cleaver for both the radio interviews and the live webTV show. Naomi is best known as the presenter of popular Channel 4 series 'Other People’s Houses' and ‘Honey I Ruined the House’ but she is also a leading design consultant so her relevance to this campaign was clear. To generate initial interest, we offered radio stations and key websites some of Naomi’s top tips for achieving your dream home as these could be used as a taster for the more comprehensive advice that she would be able to offer.
In most cases, the broadcast media would prefer to choose an ‘independent spokesperson’ so it was important for us to ensure that Ashley was also seen to have something of value to the station or site. With radio stations, Ashley was able to provide them with a regional breakdown of the survey and therefore interpret the trends for their particular area which is key for regional radio. For online, her role was to ensure that members of the public saw that what Naomi was suggesting was achievable with sensible use of your finances and the equity held in your property. For further information, audiences were directed to www.freestylemortgages.com — stations are likely to accept and even repeat this type of url far more readily than one which is an overt brand mention.
The campaign was a great success with over 2 hours of radio coverage and a combined weekly reach of 2.6 million people. Online, the Dream Homes Report Campaign was placed on 19 websites with a combined reach of over 8 million unique users. Online placement equated to over 400 days coverage which ensured that Standard Life Bank were in front of their online audiences for a significant length of time.