A new consumer campaign starting this month sees Sky going after apartment-dwellers. It’s not a niche market. The broadcaster says there are 250,000 apartments in the State with about 15,000 new units due to come on stream annually over the next four years.
At present Sky is in only about 60,000 of these homes, so that’s a lot of monthly subscriptions on which it has been missing out.
“There’s definitely growth potential in this market,” says Stephen Butterly, head of sales at Sky, “We’ve been working on it quietly for the past three months but we’re set to ramp it up now, up until Christmas time.”
The obstacle for Sky when it comes to managed housing developments is the blindingly obvious one – the service needs a satellite dish. Its nearest competitor in the market, UPC, doesn't require one, so the practical demands of installing Sky effectively, and for a long time, handed the apartment market to its competitors.
Because if there’s one thing more contentious than parking in apartment developments, it is satellite dishes, closely followed by hanging clothes to dry on the balcony.
Management companies don’t just abstractly hate them, the majority insert clauses in leases to forbid individual apartments having their own dishes.
And as the management companies control the exterior walls of the building, they have considerable power to effect that control.
That’s not to say that there aren’t many apartment blocks or small managed housing developments with dishes dotted all over their facades but, if there is a half-alert management company involved, you can be sure the residents are on the receiving end of, at the very least, stern notices to take them down.
Generally planning permission is required to affix a satellite dish to the front exterior of a building, so that’s another considerable hurdle.
The solution offered by Sky is a single standard dish – usually on the roof – with fibre technology running through the building enabling customers in each unit of a development to access the service.
“It’s not a short-term thing ,” says Butterly of the roll-out of the technology, accepting that there may be entire blocks cabled up for the service – with the permission of the management company – but where only one or two units sign up for the service.
The new campaign targets both new-builds and existing developments through, says Butterly, a “two-pronged marketing campaign to target both consumers/apartment dwellers and property developers/ management agents directly”.
This will be done through localised and personalised out of home advertising and a radio and digital campaign, as well as direct mail to potential customers offering special discounts.
The visual in the campaign is a still from one of Sky's current hits, the steamy US drama The Affair, which also serves as a not so subtle reminder that the broadcaster's unique selling proposition over other providers is its terrific, top-quality station Sky Atlantic.
UPC is already active in the apartment-cabling area. And as its service doesn’t require a dish it has possibly been an easier sell.
UPC won’t give specific figures of its penetration into multi-occupancy buildings and says only that it is now in 826,000 “premises”, representing 51 per cent of all Irish homes and has a total of 1,101,900 service subscriptions.
It does, it says, tender for business through builders and “thereafter offers the service to customers with the approval and support of the respective management company and/or landlord”.
