Love Island Marketing Wins

Love it or hate it, now that the Love Island storm is over and Hurricane Maura has had her final flutter we can finally see the marketing impact the UK’s largest TV phenomenon has had.

Marrying TV sponsorship with social media, Love Island is one of the most tweeted about TV events in the UK, hitting both millennial and Gen Z audiences 6 nights a week and it is the perfect example of how double screen marketing can and should be done.

I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen so many screen-grabbed tweets on Instagram or brands jumping on the bandwagon with video snippets and stills from the show to promote their products on their social media channels.

So how did all the big brands leverage their screen time?

Uber Eats paid ￡5million to be the title sponsor, book-ending ad breaks, doubling Superdrug’s ￡2.5million in 2018. They upped their game by then giving away discount on food delivery (in return for data capture of course!).

Fashion brand ‘I Saw It First’ offered a pretty cool approach, creating Instagram Highlights for each contestant, allowing purchase of their daily outfits with a simple swipe up to their website.

The biggest winner though? The Sun. Completely unofficial, The Sun’s consistent coverage of horny twenty-somethings benefited them with an average of 11% growth in online traffic during ad breaks. Not only that but their Whatsapp group promised ‘exclusive messages straight to your phone’ sending an engaged audience straight to their site.  

It’s estimated that ITV will have earned a staggering ￡130million in revenue from Love Island whilst contestants were reportedly paid a meagre ￡250 per week though I’m sure we can all look forward to the teeth whitening, vitamin gummy bears and unheard of fashion brand #ads that will more than subsidise their income in the next 9-12 months...