Key objectives

  • Extend, deepen and make actionable existing call to action (Believe in better) 

  • Create broad engagement across all disciplines within the business 

  • Make it part of everyday habits 

  • Create a direct impact on development of products, services and experiences 

 

1 Challenge 

  • Sky were no longer an agile, challenger brand 

  • Competitive threat was growing, with Apple joining Amazon and Netflix and many more to follow 

  • Many of their broadcast competitors can outgun them on content: the BBC budget for drama is 2.5 times theirs; Netflix spent £13bn on content in 2018 alone 

  • They therefore needed to get closer to consumers than ever before: not by being slaves to focus groups, but by listening, observing, provoking in ever more imaginative ways 

  • No other company in Europe combines its four facets: Broadcaster, Service Provider, Consumer Electronics Company, Utility. We wanted to build that combination into a unique Purpose 

2 What we did – inputs 

  • Worked with Jeremy Darroch, the Sky CEO, and the European leadership team: 

  • Cultural and historical review of Sky and its key competitors 

  • Stakeholder interviews, internal and external, across all disciplines and geographies 

  • Developed narratives and inspirational material to power 

  • Pan-European Leadership Workshop and 16 employee workshops 

  • 40 pan-Euro consumer co-creations sessions 

  • Final agreed Purpose and narrative that became bedrock for the business and set a true course for its future development  

3 What we did – embed 

  • Spent several months working with every department / discipline in Sky inspiring them to think about how to activate a new Purpose in their daily work, including how to link their personal Purpose to Sky’s 

  • Achieved through a systematic programme of immersive and inspirational workshops 

4 Impact 

The work we led and facilitated at Sky is now working its way meaningfully through the business. 

Success factors included: 

  • Saturation in the culture from its origins onwards 

  • Developing provocative hypotheses early on 

  • Brainstorming widely across different levels of the organisation: involvement is commitment 

  • Allowing different markets freedom within the Purpose framework to do what is locally right 

  • Running activation sessions across all disciplines to make the Purpose real in daily behaviours and actions 

  • Measuring the results 

  • PDR helped identify all the detailed implications our Purpose has on our marketing, products, services, relationships with consumers and internal culture”  

Victoria Franks, Brand Director, Sky