Itchy is the UK’s leading publisher of youth guidebooks and local listings websites. Focussed on providing pithy local entertainment advice across 16 of the UK’s largest cities, Itchy also recently expanded into listing events and activity on leading university campuses. Itchy’s market comprises 18–35 ABC1s with a youth bull’s-eye of 22 and a roughly equal male-female split. The brand was looking to engage with this audience using mobile and decided to partner with Jeanie to create a bespoke mobile search application.
Few 22-year-olds would relish being packed off to The Ivy on the spur of the moment; nor would they relish a day at a local village garden fete. We therefore selected content from Skiddle, Remote Goat, the Press Association, Squaremeal, the Local Data Company and, of course, Itchy to make the service all the more relevant.
It was paramount that the service emulates the Itchy brand – so that the advice given is all the more likely to stimulate action. Categories and copy were kept large, clear and legible; information consisted of everything required to make a snappy evaluation and navigate to the selected venue. The price-per-search is £1.00 – in line with other related activities.
Itchy Mobile – ‘Driven by Jeanie’ (text Itchy to 66996 to download). The application is supported by 300-plus ‘bread-and-butter’ devices, and promoted throughout in-house media using a text-to-shortcode call to action. Sales conversion has exceeded expectation with typical 0.09% reach-to-recruitment adoption and first quarter frequencies in the region of 6x month. Forthcoming distribution includes on-portal and growing promotional investment.
To view an example Itchy Mobile promotion click here.