bbcgoodfood.com's French Wines campaign - delivering direct response and branding

The Challenge

The challenge was to showcase French Wines and in doing so educate potential wine consumers about the variety of wines France has to offer.

French Wines: A campaign combining direct response and branding goalsThe client wanted to prove that there really is a French wine for every occasion. In addition they wanted to recommend specific wines to accompany local dishes by region, while simultaneously promoting tourism in France.

The Brand

Why bbcgoodfood.com was a perfect fit:

• Users buy wines for home consumption from France/Belgium
• Over one third of users are prepared to pay more for good quality wine
• 68% of users have bought wine in the last 12 months
• 45% of users are medium/heavy wine consumers; 16% heavy consumers
• Users are 39% more likely to have visited France for their last/last but one holiday

The Idea

The idea was to educate Good Food users about French wine with an easy-to-use, but detailed guide, searchable by region.

By clicking on an area of the interactive map of France, users were presented with a list of the various wines produced in that area; by clicking on each section they could effectively become experts or connoisseurs of the wines from that particular region.

The Execution

Users were introduced to the campaign, entitled, ‘French Wines, a touch of Magic’, by clicking on display ads featured on the bbcgoodfood.com homepage. Users could also click on a feature in the wine section of the website. This took them to a dedicated microsite.

By exploring the microsite they could discover the climate of the region, and the resulting obstacles vineyards encounter when growing the grapes there. On further discovery they could find historic facts about the region, must-see travel destinations to visit and recommended recipes to go with each type of wine.

bbcgoodfood.com's French Wines micrositeA separate section of the website allowed users to enter a competition where they could win a two-night trip to the French wine region of their choice by answering a question on the content.

The Results

After being exposed to the display advertising, over a third of respondents said they would benefit in some way from seeing the ad, and 27% would look for more information. Respondents were more likely to visit the client’s website, or visit in store and buy something after seeing display advertisements on the site.

• Unique users: 47,840
• Page impressions: 73,484
• Dwell Time: 1.16 minutes per page
• Competition entries: 17,052

James Florence, Senior Digital Sales Executive, BBC Worldwide comments:

“I was delighted with this campaign, we provided great quality editorial, with an effective package of traffic drivers to create a campaign which well exceeded all performance benchmarks set before the campaign."

"By driving large numbers of entrants and users to a site packed with all the quality information you would expect from BBC Good Food, we achieved both direct response and branding goals.”