Toronto shop GJP Advertising is in the movie business. Well, sort of. Creative director and EVP of GJP, John Farquhar, knew something way out of the box (literally) was in order for their client, San-Jose-based communications giant Covad. Their mission: ‘To overtake the phone company.’ The product: VoIP services. Their target audience: IT managers of small to medium-sized companies; one of the most highly penetrated U.S. broadband audiences who actively use the web to inform purchase decisions.
Last fall GJP sold Covad on branded entertainment, producing a ‘whodunit’ campaign that made Covad a finalist for the AMA’s ‘Next Big Thing’ award, Since Covad ended the first quarter of 2005 with 690 VoIP business customers, representing a 14 percent increase in VoIP station count from December, they were persuaded to do a follow-up, and push the boundaries right into the realm of horror. ‘Everybody on both sides really did swallow deep on this one,’ said Farquhar. ‘They had some familiarity and definitely some success with branded entertainment and they were determined to create a famous brand in a relatively new category, so we thought we’d follow it as a form and see what we could do.’
Launched in May, the campaign uses movie posters in targeted print media in addition to TV ads and online banners to drive viewers to a microsite where The Ringing, a three-minute horror flick trailer warns of the dangers of failing to subscribe to Covad’s VOIP services. ‘Branded entertainment has been done before but what we did with the form is what’s important,’ said Farquhar. ‘The horror genre is one of the most popular in film right now and I’ve never seen it done before for a piece of advertising,’ he adds.
Theringingmovie.com microsite offers entertainment in addition to a virtual salesperson that provides the hard information about Covad’s products and services, and has generated 36,000 hits at the two-week mark.
