The Brief

Illegal downloading of copyrighted materials via torrent is a serious problem in Korea. Torrent downloading has become so accepted that torrent users are unaware it’s illegal. As for this problem, MBC- one of the biggest broadcasting company in Korea and a victim of this issue, had decided to take the step to raise awareness of this serious problem to the target. The goal was to lead them to legally download contents from its official VOD sites and also create an issue on illegal downloading communities, inform and educate the target about illegal downloading.

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

We established a strategy by giving up our product - TV show for free. Giving out free stuff is a common method we use to promote a brand offline, but the better part of our campaign is, "Our free give-away can be a self-reproducing medium” We manipulated the #1 TV program by inserting an exclusive footage using a famous celebrity, then seeded it on torrents after airing.  By just one person downloading our torrents file, it automatically becomes a seeder(media) to expand the campaign file to other peers(targets). Through this method, the campaign was delivered successfully at no media cost.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

We had 513 peers(max) download the file per hour, and more than 45,000 in two weeks. Two weeks after the seed file was uploaded, the paid viewers on MBC's official website had increased by 39%. We also have received many feedback and responses and messages for reflection through variety of media as well as SNS, about our successful campaign with the celebrity, 'the elevator guy', delivering the message regarding the issue of legal download. We turned the peers(target audience) to seeders, and directly delivered our message to the right target audience at the right time with media cost of $0.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

Illegal downloaders are our potential customers. To lead our targets to official MBC website, we created our own ‘Torrent’ file using our TV show. To expand our torrent file widely, we picked the No.1 TV show called 'Infinite Challenge' that gets the highest hits on torrent sites/communities, and included the message delivered by a popular celebrity from the show in between the file. Then we simply uploaded the file right after airing. And it became the most popular download. The QR code included in the campaign drove the targets to MBC's official website, where they can legally download the contents.