Eerst zien dan geloven

A campaign to increase the ZWART community

Challenge

Despite a promising start and ambitious goals, Omroep ZWART didn’t produce much content in its first year. Consequently, existing members were disappointed, and potential new members were hesitant to join the community. However, in order to maintain its position within the Dutch Broadcasting system, Omroep ZWART needed to grow its community. How can the organisation attract new members while being mindful of this prevailing sentiment?

Community insights

Potential new members support Omroep ZWART. However, they are hesitant to join as paying members because they are not yet sure if the organisation will fulfil its promises.

Campaign idea

To grow the Omroep ZWART community and attract new members, we introduced the ‘seeing is believing’ membership. This initiative allows new members to join and only pay when they are convinced that Omroep ZWART will fulfil its mission and ambitions.

The campaign was launched through a video and various social assets. We developed this campaign in close collaboration with our friends of Buutvrij.

 

 

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Omroep Zwart Launch campaign

Create a social first launch campaign for a contenting Dutch broadcaster.

Challenge

Every five years, the Dutch broadcasting system offers aspiring broadcasters the opportunity to enter the Dutch national media landscape and present their television, online, and radio formats to the Dutch population. To qualify as one of these broadcasters, each potential broadcast station needs to demonstrate its relevance by acquiring 50,000 paying members before a specified deadline. In 2020/21, Omroep ZWART sought to apply for one of these spots and approached Home, Buutvrij, Havas, PRSSKD and Mediamonks to build the brand and develop the launch campaign. Our objective? To secure 50,000 paying members within 100 days.

Community insights

The Netherlands hosts over 200 nationalities. However, we have not had a national broadcaster that embraces, sees, and hears all these beautiful, unique people and stories. It’s time to awaken the Netherlands with a broadcasting station that embraces diversity. Introducing: Omroep ZWART.

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Campaign idea

With zero budget we launched ZWART. We asked 250 influencers to spread our campaign message ‘wakker?’ and encourage their followers to join the ZWART community. On the third day of the campaign, we officially unveiled ZWART by releasing the campaign video that introduced the mission and vision of the project. This led to widespread coverage in newspapers and made ZWART the hottest topic on social media.

Our approach aimed to build an active community while focusing on conversion—ensuring individuals became paying members. Daily social content was created to share the story of ZWART, ensuring people understood the beliefs behind the brand.

To boost our paying members, we introduced the ‘Verdubbeldag’ (Double day) midway through the campaign. The activation’s goal was to double our members by urging all followers to invite a friend or relative to become a ZWART member.

In just three weeks, ZWART became the largest broadcast station in the Netherlands on Instagram, boasting over 100k followers. Remarkably, within 55 days, we achieved our final goal: 50,000 paying members. This led to the official launch of Omroep ZWART in 2022 as part of the Dutch Broadcasting System.

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