Total Media received a Highly Commended accolade for its Huffington Post launch campaign at last night’s sixth Clear Channel Awards.
Total Media along with its campaign partners Posterscope and
Maher Bird Associates (MBA), won the Highly Commended award in the category for
Best Use of Digital in Outdoor.
Lucas Brown, a Partner at Total Media, said of the
achievement: “We’re delighted to receive the Highly Commended award, along with
our collaborators, Posterscope and MBA.”
“Using our specialist media and digital knowledge, we were
able to conceive and implement an innovative launch strategy which complemented
the Huffington Post and engaged audiences,” he added.
To generate buzz around the launch of the Huffington Post UK
last year, and to recruit bloggers and journalists to the site, the campaign
used an integrated mix of media, including digital and outdoor, combined with a
live Twitter feed as its centrepiece.
Positioned at railway stations, with up-to-the-minute
headlines and the most recent ten Tweets, the posters would be amongst the
first messages audiences would see each morning. As well as press coverage and a number one
trending on Twitter, the campaign generated visitor statistics beyond all
expectations.
The Clear Channel Awards celebrate the pinnacle in innovatively
planned and effective outdoor media campaigns.
With just over 100 days left until our capital lifts the
curtain on the 2012 Olympic Games, I thought it would be a good idea to see how
people will be watching the Olympics this Summer. If recent stories (and
personal experience) are anything to go by, one can assume that a lot won’t be
watching the games in the actual stadiums. So where will people be watching the
Olympics over the summer? In terms of location this could be any number of
places, for instance my family will be hosting a few Olympic BBQ’s with the TV
on in the background. Others will be heading off to some of the Olympic TV
screens in London’s parks, to indulge in some of the atmosphere and some will
join in with the hordes of crowds packing out bars to cheer Chris Hoy and
company on to gold.
Regarding the actual channels that are covering the
Olympics, your options are far more limited. The BBC will be covering the event
day and night meaning rival broadcasters are preparing themselves for a dip in
impacts during July. If Sue barker, Colin Jackson and Michael Johnson don’t cut
it for you then you’ll have to switch over to British Eurosport (assuming
you’ve paid for the correct Sky or Virgin package). Although this channel
normally has a somewhat niche profile, come the Olympics it will be showing an
all-encompassing selection of sports. The channel served me well during a
summer in Barcelona where I unfortunately spilt Sangria down a customer whilst
watching Michael Phelps win his 8th gold medal. However as is
the case with most sport on TV the success of the ratings will largely depend
upon the performance of our nations athletes, which staggeringly could actually
be pretty good. What is more, is that there will be no staying up until 2am or
waking up at 6am to watch the live events, this year’s Olympics will be more or
less catered to the UK public’s schedule meaning the allure of watching live
action should inevitably lead to more ratings.
In terms of viewing the Olympics online the story is a
somewhat similar one. The rights around any Olympic content being shown on the
internet are impressively strict with the BBC and Eurosport websites being the
only UK broadcasters able to show any content. The two websites along with BBC
iPlayer will inevitably see significant rises in traffic over the period,
however Sky Sports news will most likely see upsurges both in TV ratings and
website traffic as its special Olympic report will cater for its loyal
consumers seeking extra news. Much like last time around, expect to see clips
uploaded onto YouTube, only to be taken down swiftly.
The rise of social media over the last 4 years will clearly
add another aspect to the Olympic experience this year. The relationship
between sport and social media was fantastically demonstrated in this year’s
Super Bowl with the world record for the amount of tweets in a second broken
twice. The first came in Madonna’s half time performance and the second at the
very end of the match, my own prediction is that #ldn2012 and #ubolt
will be breaking similar records. As we have seen before on TV, these social
media buzzes will in turn create a drive back to live viewing as people do not
wish to miss out on the real time experience of watching and discussing the
Games over Social media platforms.
Needless to say if you don’t wish to watch any coverage of
the Olympics and are hell bent on avoiding the ahem… “massive waste of tax
payers’ money”…. then you will also need to avoid picking up any
newspapers as they will have the Olympics story dominating both sides seeing as
it’s not often that press has an advantage over TV and online these days.
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