The Campaign

Panasonic Viera has launched a new Eyecare TV, which promises less eye irritation. To demonstrate that the technology is superior to existing TV sets, Panasonic launched the Viera Marathon and challenged the whole of Thailand to break the world’s longest TV watching record by broadcasting the world’s longest non-stop 3 day football event. We took over TTV, a national TV station for 70 hours and broadcasted the World’s Longest Football Match LIVE. For the first time ever, all 65 million Thais can watch Panasonic branded football for 3 days non-stop. This is equivalent to a 70 hour TVC.

Success of the Campaign

The broadcast of the Viera World’s Longest Football Match, essentially a 70 hour commercial, resulted in more than 45 million people tuning in during the 3 days. All major media channels covered it, generating a stream of conversations online and on all major news channels, talk shows and front pages of national newspapers. Over 2,000 players, 50 commentators, and 100 referees joined the World’s Longest Football Match, achieving a total score of 649 : 623. Eventually we had 7 World’s Longest TV Watching record breakers, proving that the Eyecare Technology is effective. The campaign proved to be the most successful launch for Panasonic Thailand to date. Thais were not only excited by the technology, they were convinced by it. The entire Viera stock was sold out by the end of the Viera Marathon. Sales rose 250%, breaking all Panasonic Thailand’s sales record in the process.

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

A recruitment campaign that spanned from posters, web videos, live stunts, microsites to TVCs was ran to tell the entire country to rest their eyes in order to get ready for 70 hours of TV watching as well as to take part in the World’s longest football match. Two websites, JoinWorldLongestFootballMatch.com and JoinWorldLongestTVviewing.com, were launched for registrations. And then came the organizing of the actual events. We organized the Viera World’s Longest Football Match, which was broadcasted LIVE through TTV. To prove that the Eyecare technology works, we specially constructed a Viera TV Viewing Hall in Central World Bangkok, where 20 contenders tried to break the record by using Viera TVs to watch the World’s Longest Football Match.