Winner:
BBC America for Robin Hood Season 2
BBC America dedicated a chunk of its campaign budget for
the second season of Robin Hood to outdoor advertising in
New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, including a video
board in Times Square. It also tested new technology, placing
ground-level storefront window wraps in key neighborhoods
that transmitted a trailer to anyone in the area with a Blue-tooth-equipped mobile phone. Looking to generate goodwill
with Comcast during carriage talks, BBC hired actors in
Philadelphia dressed as Robin, Marian and several of the
Merry Men to open cab doors, help carry groceries and perform other good deeds. Although the actors didn’t take from
the rich and give to the poor, ratings for the second season
of Robin Hood jumped 128%, and the Saturday run grabbed
the largest DVR audience for BBC America of any night of the
week. BBC also booked several top-shelf advertisers for the
show, including Miramax and Hyundai.
♣
Winner: Oxygen for Tori & Dean:
Home Sweet Hollywood
Oxygen focused on New
York and Los Angeles to
hype the return of Tori &
Dean. It bought above- and
below-ground billboards
in New York, and reached
for the skies in L.A., hiring
skywriters to plug the show.
It even had Tori Spelling and
hubby Dean record greetings that ran on TV screens
in NYC taxis, and wrapped
elevators at NBC Universal’s
30 Rockefeller Plaza building from oor to ceiling with
Tori & Dean creative. Oxygen Clever, Baby: Oxygen took
hired chauffeurs to hold an appropriately media-savvy
signs at various gates at L.A. approach to marketing T&D
International Airport pretend- season 2.
ing to welcome back the
couple and locals walked red com, People.com and other
carpets that touted the series sites popular with fans of the
at restaurants and night- show. The marketing push
clubs. Street teams in “Wel- helped make the premiere of
come Home! Tori & Dean” the second season of Tori &
T-shirts were deployed. In Dean the highest-rated and
addition to national, local most-watched season pre-cable and spot TV, Oxygen miere of an Oxygen original
advertised on PerezHilton. series ever.
♣
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
AMC and NMA Entertainment & Marketing for Mad
Men Season 2: Viewership jumped 63% during the
second season of Mad Men after a campaign from AMC
and NMA that featured promos on VOD screens in 302
Delta airplanes, plugs from Alex Trebek and a category
on Jeopardy!, ads in hotels wired by LodgeNet and a viral
marketing campaign with Evite.
Sundance Channel for Iconoclasts Season 4:
Sundance continued featuring its iconic photographs of intimate moments between celebrities and a “change the way
you see celebrity” tagline to tout season 4 of Iconoclasts.
World Wrestling Entertainment for WWE
McMahon’s Million Dollar Mania Promotion: More
than 6 million wrestling fans submitted entries after WWE
founder Vince McMahon promised to give away $1 million
of his own money weekly to promote Monday Night Raw
on USA Network. Viewing jumped 25% in the three weeks
following the start of “McMahon’s Million Dollar Mania.”
ABC Family for The Secret Life of the American
Teenager Season 2 Launch: The second season premiere
ranked as ABC Family’s No. 1 telecast of all time for teens 12
to 17, thanks to a broad campaign featuring print, in-theater
spots, national and local TV, radio and online advertising.
