The prize was presented at the 25th Marketing Society Awards for Excellence on Monday June 8 and shared with ad agency WCRS.
Sky's entry explained how its regular "customer-closeness research" sessions helped solve a problem it was having with communicating the benefits of being a Sky+ customer.
Before the breakthrough the company's quantitative research showed Sky+ was going down well with existing customers and a crucial tool in getting Freeview users to consider changing brands. However, its previous attempts to market Sky+ on a large scale failed.
Then in the customer sessions, where different types of TV viewers met each other along with Sky executives, Sky understood the answer.
Sky+ customers were enthusiastically explaining the service to Freeview users, resulting in the latter group wanting to sign up there and then.
Realising the solution was to tell, not sell, Sky ordered a campaign featuring celebrities such as Michael Parkinson and Ross Kemp talking about the advantages of Sky+.
The campaign helped Sky to produce its strongest fourth quarter net additions in five years, attracting 321,000 new customers.