Tesco’s offers loyal customers free BBC and Warner productions

Warner Bros., Endemol, BBC…

Mid February it became clear that Tesco’s new
loyalty programme, Clubcard TV, will offer holders of a loyalty card the possibility to watch films and TV shows for free. For now this is only possible
on a pc, but in the future it will be extended to tablets, smartphones,
smart-TV’s, blu-ray players and even game consoles.

In the meantime the service is almost a month
old and it would appear that Tesco is going all out. The Tesco subsidiary Blinkbox
has made deals with Warner Bros., Endemol and Aardman Animations (Wallace and
Gromit), bringing in over 500 films and 1700 shows. There is also an agreement
with BBC Worldwide that will offer cookery shows, comedy and drama.

Well targeted commercials

Clubcard TV offers all these programs for fee
to loyalty card holders of Tesco. The company wants to fund the project through
well targeted commercials, which should lead to higher sales in the department
stores.

Michael Comisch, CEO of Tesco Digital
Entertainment, said the following at the launch of Clubcard TV: “The
reason we can offer great programming for free is because customers will see
relevant advertising before and during the movie or TV show they are watching.
We’ll use Clubcard data to tell us what might be relevant for our customers and
therefore help us deliver a more personalised service.”

One of the first advertisers on Clubcard TV is
Kellogg’s, whose ad is shown before and during cartoons and movies for
children. Colgate and Danone also were early investors.

The principle also works the other way around: “Customers
will have an opportunity to shape Clubcard TV by providing feedback both on content
and additional features they would like to see added”, says Comisch. This
will definitely mean a massive amount of useful data for Tesco from its sixteen
million cardholder.