Campaign: Founding Fathers
Agency: In-house
Client: The History Channel, New York City
The History Channel leveraged an arsenal of tools last fall to turn what could have been perceived as a stodgy subject — a Founding Fathers mini-series — into something viewers wouldn’t want to miss.
A Wannabe President tune-in sweeps, hyped on-air during the two months leading up to the program, had viewers spotting clues before calling a toll-free number to win grand-prize trips recreating the original settlers’ journey to America. A separate flight delivered gamecards to cable affiliates to distribute to subscribers.
Online, historychannel.com chimed in with a Founding Fathers mini-site featuring interactive polls, an explanation of the electoral system (which proved popular considering the Presidential election controversy that was taking place), digital previews of the program, links to the sweeps, and classroom study guides.
Offline, a high school essay contest promoted via direct mail to 17,000 school officials offered college scholarships for winners who best described the value of the founding fathers’ contributions to America. Five million pamphlets and counter-card displays were distributed through 3,000 libraries. TV spots and outdoor billboards extended the marketing message, as did 800,000 targeted e-mails and live reenactments of colonial-era debates staged in Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia. A mobile Time Machine (the network’s year-long grassroots campaign) took the program local, with staffers handing out tune-in information and pamphlets.
“The client was looking to do something that was a little more unique than what had been done before,” says Marc Weilheimer, senior vp-account supervisor with Greenwich, CT-based Clarion Marketing & Communications, which handled the sweeps component. “This turned out to be a successful formula for attracting viewers.”
“We had a tough subject to sell,” says Artie Scheff, the network’s senior vp-marketing. “This could have been thought of as old and ‘text booky.'”
But it wasn’t. More than 26,000 viewers entered the sweeps, 5,000 students submitted essays, and Web site traffic jumped 48 percent to more than 525,000 daily page views . More than 30 cable affiliates participated, and 75 million impressions were generated via p.r. efforts. Ratings for the four-day mini-series were History Channel’s highest ever — and double network averages.
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