Why is this work relevant for Direct?

Dramabait Cam isn't a campaign for the masses. It's a campaign created for a very specific audience - people who like car wrecks/accidents/drama. And to target this niche group of people, we hijacked Facebook Car Accident Communities. Serving customised video content with a clear call to action that increased conversion numbers and created a halo effect among the masses.

Background

To relaunch History Channel’s Celebrity Car Wars and create awareness and relevance for the upcoming season that was losing traction amongst viewers.

Describe the creative idea (30% of vote)

To relaunch History Channel’s latest season of Celebrity Car Wars, a reality show that’s filled with tonnes of drama, we created a hyper-targeted video campaign that scratches people’s itch for watching chaos by showing them none. We started off by creating a series of 'dramabait' videos that looked like dashcam and CCTV footage. We then seeded them in Facebook car accident communities – where people actively expected bad things to happen. A timely twist revealed the gag and the fact that the best drama can now be found on History Channel's Celebrity Car Wars Season 3.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

Traditionally, Celebrity Car Wars has always appealed to car enthusiast. But for Season Three, we wanted to broaden the audience to attract more viewers. So, we tapped into a basic human insight: that people love watching things go epically wrong. And to target this audience, we looked to sites that curated road rage and bloopers. But we didn’t just serve them ads, we created original and organic ‘dramabait’ video content and hijacked social content sites where people instinctively search for car fails. Giving people a glimpse of what they can expect to see on Celebrity Car Wars Season 3 with a simple message: Expect the best car drama. Ever.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

We created a hyper-targeted campaign of ‘dramabait’ videos that looked like authentic dashcam and CCTV footage. Then we curated a list of YouTube and Facebook car accident/blooper communities where people expected to see loads of drama. And instead of serving them with boring-old ads, we hijacked their content with our original ‘dramabait’ footage/videos. And directed viewers to the season premiere of Celebrity Car Wars Season 3.

List the results (30% of vote)

By hooking onto people’s undeniable curiosity for drama, our videos received up to 941,568 views per video in just 2 weeks! Totalling close to 3.5 million video views that created a whopping 49.2% social engagement rate. More importantly, this led to 3.3 million unique viewers during the Season Premiere of Celebrity Car Wars in South-East Asia. All for just SGD3,500.