Binge is confident that it can carve out a place for itself in the cluttered streaming market, despite its late arrival, by building its brand as a guiltless pleasure.
Foxtel, majority owned by News Corp, launched the platform last week, taking on players such as Netflix, Stan and Disney+ in Australia with a competitive price point, from $10 a month.
Binge’s content library is boosted by an exclusive deal Foxtel secured with HBO, giving it shows such as The Wire, Game of Thrones and The Sopranos.
Launched in the middle of a global pandemic, Binge could also help a struggling Foxtel and benefit from increased viewership as people spend more time indoors to slow the spread of coronavirus.
The platform is run out of Foxtel’s Streamotion division, which also runs sports streaming platform Kayo. Binge chief marketing officer Louise Crompton says the platform will stand out in the market by first building its brand around “celebrating binging”.
“Firstly, we have to establish the brand,” Crompton says. “We are late to market and we're coming into a crowded marketplace so there is a lot of work to do to say, ‘Hello, Binge is here, and this is what we stand for’.
“We think that building the brand around the emotional benefits of streaming and also wrapping it up in such a magnificent entertaining personality, is certainly a key part of the job.”
The platform’s first campaign, developed by The Hallway, rolled out over the weekend, pushing the message of it as “a place for unapologetic pleasure”.
Binge has a team of four within its marketing team, and has been supported by about 30 people within Streamotion. While the marketing team and its agency were forced to change their campaign strategy within eight weeks of launching, as lockdowns made filming commercials difficult, Crompton says the messaging remained the same.
“We’ve really taken a lot of time to consider what is the right way to position this brand and what is the core purpose of the brand at its heart," Crompton says.
“And that's really about celebrating binging, and it's really about the emotional benefits of steaming, which are indulgence, and escapism and that precious ‘me time’.”
The term “binge” has become a big part of today’s culture, made popular by streaming giant Netflix which changed the way people consume TV content. Despite the terms position across the broader streaming culture, Crompton is confident Binge can carry the name.
“It [Binge] has been part of the thinking for quite some time and we really love the name,” she says.
“We think the name reflects the pedigree of the content that we have on Binge. When people talk about binging a show, it's almost a badge of honor, it reflects something that they've loved so much that they've just not been able to stop watching.
"And we know that the content on Binge is exceptional content and it's content that people are going to love and we've taken a lot of time to curate a collection of content that we know is award-worthy, share-worthy, binge-worthy, or all-time favourite-worthy.
“So, we're really proud of the name, and I guess in a way we're being a bit cheeky because we are hijacking the category verb but we feel we can do that because of the content that we have.”
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