THEIR CHALLENGE
Roku is a global giant in the TV streaming landscape, partnering with major UK retailers like Currys and AO to drive product sales. Tasked with capturing the lucrative "Back to Uni" seasonal market, Roku aimed to launch a targeted campaign for students and parents. However, they faced a twofold enterprise challenge:
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The Demographic Fallacy: Internal data lacked persona depth, relying on broad, generic segments like "students" without visibility into the psychological drivers (such as setup anxiety or dorm-life convenience) that dictate ecosystem selection.
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The Retailer Tracking Blindspot: Because final transactions occurred entirely on third-party websites, Roku was barred from deploying direct tracking pixels. This tracking deficit made deterministic conversion measurement impossible, forcing a reliance on upstream proxy signals.
OUR SOLUTION
We deployed our core Behavioural Science team to execute primary research with UK students and parents, engineering a media-addressable framework built on genuine human motivations rather than superficial age brackets.
Our integrated team executed a streamlined recovery and growth framework:
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Motivational Persona Clustering: We mapped distinct cognitive schemas regarding setup friction, value perceptions, and identity cues, clustering the data into four highly targeted psychographic profiles: Gaming & Tech Lovers, Home Entertainment Seekers, Streaming Enthusiasts, and Social Streamers.
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Psychological Creative Alignment: We developed bespoke creative assets for each persona, directly answering their specific subconscious drivers (such as highlighting absolute simplicity to counter moving-day setup anxiety).
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Proxy-to-Sales Modelling: Operating without retailer pixels, our performance media teams optimised live campaigns toward behavioural proxy metrics (CTR, CPC, and quality reach), subsequently aligning this data with trailing retailer sales reports to deterministically model downstream commercial uplift.
THE IMPACT
By replacing generic demographic assumptions with deep psychological segmentation, the campaign achieved remarkable creative efficiency and directly stimulated massive commercial growth across third-party networks:
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Shattering Creative Benchmarks: Persona-led creative variants completely outpaced traditional control lookalikes, yielding a 33% higher Click-Through Rate (CTR) and a 39% reduction in Cost-Per-Click (CPC).
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Explosive Retailer Sales Velocity: During active campaign weeks, the strategy drove a magnificent 58% year-on-year increase in total TV sales across all retail channels, peaking at a phenomenal 74% year-on-year sales surge for Roku JVC TVs on Currys.
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Quantifiable Revenue Growth: Advanced downstream sales modelling successfully demonstrated an estimated £60k - £80k in pure incremental revenue, translating to a highly efficient 2.1 Estimated Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
33%
Higher CTR from persona-led creatives
39%
Lower CPCs from persona-led creatives
£60 - £80K
Estimated revenue
2.1
Estimate ROAS
