The Sky name is synonymous with Media and Entertainment, both in the home and the leisure and hospitality industries. Sky Business, a challenger brand launched in July 2021, offering a differentiated broadband proposition to the B2B market. However, the B2B market has a high degree of inertia, so there was a need for insight that would go deeper than usual and unlock evidence-based changes that could be made to genuinely drive switching.
Combining Verve’s B2B expertise with our in-house Behavioural Science capabilities, we undertook 40 carefully structured digital depth interviews across a full range of SME sectors to understand experiences of being a customer of the industry-leading brand and their reflection on the process that took them there.
Making use of the COM-B model of behaviour change, we explored the Capabilities, Opportunities and Motivations involved in switching broadband provider, as well as using laddering techniques to understand how to talk about benefits and business outcomes, as well as how to disrupt the market. This innovative approach to B2B research unlocked a genuinely game-changing set of principles and behavioural nudges, which has allowed Sky Business to develop campaigns in an evidence-based way. This means campaigns are focused on what SMEs want to see, hear and feel, in order to minimize barriers and galvanize them into switching.
We believe that bringing Behavioural Science thinking into this topic is innovative. Applying models like COM-B in B2B research is relatively novel, as it’s typically used in the health psychology field and consumer research.
In our personal experience and opinion, there can be an industry tendency to think Behavioural Science is not for B2B. Experience tells us time and again that business people are no different in their thinking than everyone else! Ultimately, we are dealing with, and selling to people, and where there are people, there is Behavioural Science.
Outcome: We synthesised the findings to develop a set of important principles for the team at Sky Business, building a ‘story’ to enable the team to deliver a more compelling proposition in terms of brand, positioning, and communications. We also created a playbook, which the Sky Business team can use beyond this project to put this thinking into action.