Digital Media Buzz > Agency Spotlight: BRiGHTLiNE-iTV

Agency Spotlight: BRiGHTLiNE-iTV

Agency Spotlight: BRiGHTLiNE-iTV

Past Projects: Ameritrade, Axe, Lipton, Vaseline, Burger King

Company URL: www.brightlineitv.com

When does an advertisement viewed from your television stop being an ad and instead turn into a fun, engaging, entertaining experience? When it is made into an iAd also known as Interactive Advertisement. Interactive television is overlooked as a viable option in the advertising world probably because it is not traditional television and because it is so misunderstood. Many agencies and clients will overlook this way of advertising because it doesn’t fit into their templated media plan. We know about traditional advertising such as print, TV, out-of-home as well as online, mobile and even advertisements inserted into games but iTV is different.

One recent campaign that is worth talking about is “The AXE Sweet Life” iAd. This execution created by BRiGHTLiNE-iTV won Best iAd at the DISH 2009 Interactive Summit Awards in Englewood, Colo. on Feb. 27.

This program had everything you need for a successful campaign and everything you could want if you were a consumer. You could play games, enter sweepstakes via the iAd or mobile phone, view video, and of course engage with a great new product — AXE Chocolate body spray.

DMB’s Dave Baron recently spoke with BRiGHTLiNE-iTV’s co-founder and executive vice president, Rob Aksman. Below are some metrics that BRiGHTLiNE has allowed us to share:

Mass Audience Reach and Involvement:

• Crafted to reach 63 MM interactive and on-demand homes
• More than 2.5 Million voluntary engagements in two weeks
• Extensive time spent engaging with “uncensored” spot and games.
• More than 63% of total sweepstakes entries for Axe’s “Win the Sweet Life” contest entered while on the interactive TV channel via mobile phone or the remote control.

So what do you think about consistency in creative execution between the different platforms?
The program as a whole spanned satellite [DISH and DirectTV] and digital cable with VOD component [Comcast, Time Warner and others] and that is also part of our role of helping them [the client] figure things out. What you see as a Time Warner subscriber looks and feels completely different from what someone with DirectTV might have, but at the end of the day the behavior is different across the board. Where there is a change in behavior there is value to be extracted. If the goal is to get someone to spend more time with your brand there are ways to do that on every platform … and still have an equally pleasurable experience.

One of the more unique offerings I learned from this interview was the game that BRiGHTLiNE-iTV designed for AXE, and how it leveraged the PR team.
PR had a fun study on women’s opinions of the sexual properties of chocolate and we were able to take that data and turned it into a game on the TV set. Data was taken from a previous survey where women were asked a series of questions relating to what they feel about chocolate and its sexual properties. When playing the game if you got the answer right the girl smiles, if you got the answer wrong she bites a chunk out of his (chocolate) body. What was originally a survey done for PR purposes — we were able to turn into a game on iTV.

How would you sum up the success of the campaign?
From an iTV perspective it was one of the largest-reaching programs spanning satellite and VOD and spoke to the brand clients’ prowess and leveraging or feeding the behavior that they are finding across the board in terms of digital TV households, satellite or cable. It was also a great 360 program from the entire agency team. Any one channel on its own living in a vacuum can only be so effective but when you have an overall integrated program where each and every element and channel kind of feeds into each other that takes the experience to a whole new level.

Watch the BRiGHTLiNE-iTV Axe Chocolate below:

  

David Baron, PMP, is an independent consultant and interactive project manager with experience launching successful projects in online, mobile, gaming and interactive television. You can reach him at david@parksideblue.com.