Ratings smash The Voice Kids has media buyers and sponsors cracking open the champers – and is proving such a hit for one brand that it's had to rush to get extra stock on the shop shelves.
Pharmacare children's supplements brand Kids Smart and Woolworths are sponsors of the kids' reality show on Nine, which went to air for the second time last night with an audience of 1.665 million.
The program has exceeded sponsors' and media buyers' expectations by about 25%.
Shivani Maharaj, director of implementation planning and investment at MediaCom, which handles the media buying for Pharmacare, told AdNews: “The audience guarantee that Nine gave us beforehand was 1.3 million, so it's beating expectations by about 20 to 25%. It's doing about 1.65 million [in the metro areas], and is hitting 2.3 million including regional viewers – and the media for Kids Smart is on regional TV as well.”
Paul Brooks, national head of investment at Carat, which currently holds Woolies' media account, said: “The show is delivering ahead of expectations, and we expect it to grow further, as shows like this tend to build as resonance with the kids involved grows.”
Maharaj said The Voice Kids is hitting Pharmacare's target audience: “We are buying against grocery buyers with kids. Last night's audience 93% of all grocery buyers with kids who were watching free-to-air TV were watching The Voice Kids.”
It's Kids Smart's first big sponsorship – and it's working because it's a natural fit with the show.
Maharaj said: “It's pretty high numbers for us. We've not done a big sponsorship with Kids Smart before, but it came about because the messaging is right. It's about reaching kids' potential – that's the message from both The Voice Kids and Kids Smart.
“We have had to increase our stock distribution over the last fortnight to make sure we have got enough stock on the shelves. It's too early for us to tell if the sponsorship is working, but we do know we have pushed out extra stock to keep the shelves stocked.”
Maharaj added that there was scepticism around how well The Voice Kids would do, considering the poor ratings performance of the second outing of Junior MasterChef on Ten in 2011, when audience numbers plummeted from 1.129 million to 661,000 during the series.
“Some people were sceptical it would do well because Junior MasterChef rated poorly,” she said. “It's helped that Nine has put it on Sunday night, because it was originally meant to go on Mondays or Tuesdays.”
The Voice Kids debuted to 1.652 million across Australia's five metro areas last week. Last night it pulled in 1.665 million, peaking at 2.079 million.
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