The Campaign

The brief was to launch 3 unknown shows that were notorious for sex, violence and vulgarities on 1 unknown channel in 2 countries that were famous for tight censorship laws. The entire campaign premise is based on an strong local understanding of people's strong reaction towards this particular topic. So instead of telling them watch these shows. We told them NOT to. Well...not us. We created a government body and DEMANDED that they refrain from watching it. Yes, a logo, a microsite complete with it's own Wikipedia page... The campaign was launched in 2 clear phases. At first, it appeared like an absolutely normal launch. We saw promo trailers on TV, out-door bus shelter light boxes and print advertising promoting the shows. The campaign shouted that these shows were "edgy" therein creating the association to the channels premise of being "The Edge of Entertainment."

Success of the Campaign

The client was quite freaked out. As were we. When we first launched our government body - the initial responses were that of anger and sheer indictment. The cleverer ones were quick to spot that this was a marketing campaign and commented through blogs, twitter and forums that this wasn't real. Throughout this time, viewership and subscriptions to the show and channel just soared. For every letter written to our local newspapers about the ads being "distasteful" or "misleading" there was quickly a response from the public to fight up for the campaign. In total, we achieved close to USD$275,800 of unpaid, organic press coverage on the campaign in less than 2 weeks. And that's not counting the online buzz generated from the hundreds of thousands of impressions to the various blogs, twitter, online news sites and forums...

Describe how the campaign/entry was launched and executed across each channel in the order of implementation.

Phase 2 was a clamp down in full force... On the once "normal" light boxes - huge official notices were put up cleverly telling people NOT to watch these shows. On TV, we made history by being the FIRST cable TV channel to get it's ad approved on competing terrestrial TV. We did this on clever, prime time news placements that made our "press conference" TVC look like part of the bulletin. In Cinemas, we placed trailers of Californication. Only that mid-way through at the hottest, sex scene - we then covered it up with a government notice. Leaving the audience to hear the moaning and groaning... On Radio, we cleverly bought into dialogue time between Singapore's most popular radio hosts on prime time morning everyday for 2 weeks. They too added fuel to this raging fire by "anti-promoting" the shows and the channel.