Eyes on the pies: How Four'N Twenty and QMS struck new customer gold by mashing real-time Olympics content and dynamic ads – sales soar 30%

Four’N Twenty pies are literally baked-in to footy and Patties Food Group marketing boss Anand Surujpal gets a related proposition across his desk every week. But his challenge is to grow share through new buyers beyond “diehard footy fans” and tradies.

So when the prop for the Paris Olympics landed, Surujpal saw an opportunity for a bigger demographic slice of the action by mashing live Olympics content with ads in real-time via QMS’ digital out of home network.

The results were meaty: “When the campaign went live, we had unit sales lifts of up to 30 per cent,” says Surujpal. “This is on a big brand with distribution, awareness, trial, recognition.” Even better, “We've actually retained the consumers and maintained the growth … It’s had a big halo effect.”

Strategy chief Christian Zavecz says QMS wanted to match Australia’s athletes in “pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved” while “bringing big brands and Australians together through the unifying power of sport”. Plus, the Olympics provided the perfect platform to prove digital out-of-home is now a broadcast medium that can deliver real-time creative responses – and results. So QMS, TBWA and Patties Food Group pulled out all the stops to make it happen.

“We had a 24/7 newsroom that worked really closely with our tech team. We had a custom-built dynamic content optimisation platform that enabled us to continually publish real-time branded content featuring everything from medal moments to breaking news and live metal tallies, along with what to watch coming up,” says Zavecz.

The results speak for themselves – Surujpal admits it’s opened his eyes to just how far digital out-of-home has advanced. “It has changed my perception of the medium. To have speed and accuracy, being relevant immediately, I think that's a powerful tool.”

QMS now has the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics just around the corner.

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