Sky is doubling down on “emotional” advertising in a bid to shift brand consideration and reach new consumers with the launch of its newest TV.
“Traditionally, we’ve been a product-focused organisation,” says Carli Kerr, managing director of Sky TV and Now. “But consumer insight showed us people emotionally connect with the brand. So we’ve put more emphasis on emotional advertising and it’s had a great impact.”
That shift began a year ago with the launch of the ‘Get That Sky Feeling’ positioning, which aimed to promote the Sky Glass TV beyond its product-specific focus by leaning into how the product makes customers feel. Now, the brand is building on that foundation with the launch of Sky Glass Air, its newest connected TV.
Today (19 June), Sky debuts a new campaign starring Andrew Garfield to mark the Sky Glass Air launch.
Sky is doubling down on “emotional” advertising in a bid to shift brand consideration and reach new consumers with the launch of its newest TV.
“Traditionally, we’ve been a product-focused organisation,” says Carli Kerr, managing director of Sky TV and Now.
“But consumer insight showed us people emotionally connect with the brand. So we’ve put more emphasis on emotional advertising and it’s had a great impact.”
That shift began a year ago with the launch of the ‘Get That Sky Feeling’ positioning, which aimed to promote the Sky Glass TV beyond its product-specific focus by leaning into how the product makes customers feel. Now, the brand is building on that foundation with the launch of Sky Glass Air, its newest connected TV.
Today (19 June), Sky debuts a new campaign starring Andrew Garfield to mark the Sky Glass Air launch. The campaign is part of a wider push to position Sky’s full TV portfolio in a more unified and emotionally resonant way.
A separate ad to support Sky Glass Gen 2 aired a few weeks ago, both produced by Sky’s in-house agency Sky Creative.
“Our approach for this launch has been to do a Glass campaign, but it’s also the launch moment for Sky Glass Air. We want to talk about the full portfolio, because different TVs suit different consumer needs,” explains Kerr. “This campaign moment is really for both of them.”
Reaching new audiences
Sky first launched its Sky Glass TV in 2021 and was, at the time, touted as the world’s first “streaming TV”. The device streams content entirely over the internet, with no satellite dish or box.
The most recent Sky Glass Air product is aimed at “value-seekers” – younger consumers, first-time TV buyers, or people moving home – who are looking for affordability without compromising on experience.
“We spent a lot of time speaking to consumers,” says Kerr. “We looked for what gaps in the marketplace for us to go after to appeal to new audiences.”
The product is priced from £6 a month over 48 months and is designed to meet “different consumer needs”.
We seem like one team. We have roadmap sessions together where our marketers are feeding in and influencing what we do with our product.
Carli Kerr, Sky
Kerr claims Sky’s shift to emotionally-led marketing is paying off, based on a “robust measurement framework”, including tracking, creative impact testing, econometric modelling, and test and learn capability.
The first Get That Sky Feeling campaign drove a sustained seven percentage point increase in brand consideration, alongside what Kerr describes as an “unprecedented” 19 percentage point growth in the ‘brand for me’ metric – which measures how personally relevant consumers find the brand.
“We do think that the thing driving that ‘brand for me’ metric is by doing more emotional advertising with consumers,” she says. “If we’re talking to consumers in a way that’s really relevant to them and is resonating with them, they’re more likely to see us as a brand for them.”
Sky also claims the advertising has delivered an “unprecedented” return on media investment from a cost per consideration perspective, while customer satisfaction is “high”. The sales impact is expected to be distributed over the next 18 months.
The latest campaign builds on that foundation, while shifting the focus to affordability, spotlighting the entry-level price of Sky Glass Air and will roll out across TV, out-of-home and social media.
Get that Sky Feeling was originally rooted in the consumer insight that customers “love Sky”, but they couldn’t explain why. The new product offering is an extension of what the company set out to do a year ago.
“We think that by shifting to the more emotional advertising, alongside the product advertising in a more engaging way, that balance has worked well and has enabled customers to see us as a brand for them,” she adds.
Role for AI
The launch comes as more people, especially younger ones, are choosing to watch streaming over linear TV.
According to WPP Media’s This Year Next Year report, streaming TV will represent just over a quarter ($41.8bn/£31bn) of total TV ad revenue this year. This will increase rapidly over the next five years to reach $71.9bn (£53bn) in 2030, just over 40% of the TV total.
Over the past 18 months, Sky has prioritised becoming “more personalised and relevant” through data and automation.
“We’re using data much more than we used to and each quarter it grows and grows,” Kerr says. “We’re focused on being personalised and relevant with consumers, and picking those use cases where we can create the best impact.”
AI is now playing a bigger role in making this scalable and helping with the “heavy lifting”. A Sky Sports campaign last year targeted fans of 72 different teams, reaching targeted audiences on different media channels and with personalised creative. AI was used in concept testing with synthetic personas and effectiveness analysis of creative assets. The team also worked closely with media partners to leverage AI planning tools to enhance targeting and measurement.
“We’re focused on how we can have personalised and automated creative for all of the teams, but also using AI to amplify or make things easier and simpler for us as we go through that journey,” she explains.
Sky sees a role for AI to “complement and enhance” creativity, Kerr adds. This includes automating repetitive, high-volume tasks, such as image clean-up and reformatting, enabling the Sky Creative team to manage visual content “efficiently while maintaining quality”.
The broadcaster is using AI to enhance concept development and design by allowing for faster prototyping and “high-end visual execution”.
Sky also recently launched an internal AI ‘Dragon’s Den’ initiative, inviting employees from across the business to pitch AI-driven ideas. The most promising are presented to a panel including the CEO, helping surface and scale innovation from all corners of the company.
Product, marketing and the wider business
At Sky, marketing and product development go hand in hand, unlike at many organisations. According to Marketing Week’s 2025 Career & Salary Survey, fewer than half of marketers (48.8%) say they have influence over product decisions, and just 48.5% are involved in innovation or new product development.
That’s not the case at Sky, says Kerr, who claims the product team sees marketing as the “voice of the consumer”.
“We seem like one team. We have roadmap sessions together where our marketers are feeding in and influencing what we do with our product. We work on the proposition. We get the consumer insights and we work really closely, and collaboratively, with the product team,” she explains.
Meanwhile, Sky has undergone significant structural changes. In January, the business brought TV and streaming under one portfolio team to reflect how consumers view content holistically.
“We’re now thinking about the platform and the content together as one,” she says. “We’re focused on making sure we’re thinking about the consumer across the full suite, whereas before we were a bit more separated.”
Internally, there’s been a lot of movement. Just last month, Sky’s former marketing director Sunny Bhurji left the business to join TUI. He joins Amber Pine, who left Sky in April to become TUI CMO.
Sky has been restructuring for quite some time. Led by Sky Creative, at the beginning of this year the company redefined its brand purpose and values to ensure they guide not just marketing, but the entire business.
“At Sky, we believe in better and we have done for a long time, but we’ve imbued that with meaning, with the new brand purpose ‘To bring you the joy of a better experience,’” she explains.
Elsewhere, Sky has long invested in fostering marketing talent from within. In 2022, it launched its Marketing Excellence Programme to provide marketers with the training, development and space needed to deliver best-in-class marketing.
“We’re passionate about upskilling our marketing teams,” Kerr notes. “The Marketing Excellence Programme is something we’re proud of and something we continue to invest in over time. AI is becoming a big focus in that.”
Although Sky operates within a matrixed structure, she emphasises the strength of the company’s cross-functional collaboration.
“We encourage a lot of rotations through the organisation on marketing propositions or marketing creative campaigns, so everyone gets to work on everything,” Kerr adds.
