ABOUT

Concept

NT At Home challenged us to reimagine how people engage with theatre on streaming platforms. Our objective was to increase engagement, drive new subscriptions and showcase the platform’s rich catalogue beyond its most popular titles, all during the traditionally quiet post-Christmas season.

The insight was simple but powerful: people don’t just stream content; they plan their weekends around it.

Our idea was to elevate passive viewing into an intentional, shared cultural ritual. We launched Weekend Watchalong, a campaign that positioned a different NT At Home production each weekend as the ‘hero title’ and gave audiences a reason to press play together.

Instead of focusing on plot or cast, we led with mood and lifestyle.

Every play was paired with relatable rituals like “whisky, gastropub, mind games and existentialism”, inviting people to build a weekend around streaming theatre. It was theatre, reimagined for the Saturday night scroll.

Execution

Our media and creative strategy centred on making NT At Home feel relevant, social, and curated. More like a cultural appointment than a content library.

Our approach was grounded in insights from our own commissioned Cultural Streaming research, which revealed that social media plays a critical role in content discovery, while TV advertising remains the most influential driver of new viewing. These findings directly shaped our channel mix and messaging strategy, ensuring that we engaged audiences in the moments that matter most: when they were actively planning their weekends.

We built a smart, data-led targeting model:

• Mapped postcode and timestamp data over two years to locate high-potential regions for growth and community engagement
• Applied Mosaic segmentation to target “Alpha Families”, “Cafes and Catchments” and “Penthouse Chic” personas
• Refreshed regional performance data weekly to fuel ongoing optimisation

The campaign launched across:

• Sky AdSmart (for addressable, ABC1-focused reach on TV)
• Meta Reminder ads (nudging viewers at the ideal moment)
• Radio Times homepage takeovers (to engage culturally attuned streamers)
• Programmatic display using CRM and postcode overlays to amplify lookalike reach

Creative assets used sharp, contemporary language to elevate plays into lifestyle moments, merging traditional theatre prestige with binge-worthy digital habits.

Results

The campaign significantly exceeded expectations across all KPIs:

• Viewing time per subscriber beat target by 30% (1.3 hrs vs. 1.0 hr goal)
• New subscriptions surged by an extraordinary 434% above target
• Overall subscriber base grew 15% month-on-month, with 21% of total subs driven directly by the campaign
• Featured titles jumped an average of 16 ranking places, with one leaping from 40th to 5th
• Average increase of 230% in hours viewed and 160% in share of viewership on campaign days

This campaign reframed streaming theatre as a cultural ritual and made NT At Home part of people’s weekend plans, delivering results that were both creatively fresh and commercially outstanding.

Client quote:

"Given that just after the holiday season is historically quieter on streaming platforms, we wanted to engage with our audience, from long time advocates to recently subscribed customers. We wanted to highlight the breadth and depth that NT at Home has to offer when it comes to our plays. Taking some much-loved classics and putting them in front of a new audience. The campaign was a massive success, not only by increasing play views on the platform, but it also helped drive a larger than average amount of new subscribers to the platform that month."