Voyeurism, cute greeting cards, pub travels the world and internet shut down

And we have the first winners!

Today the winners were announced for Direct Lions and Promo Lions. I'm listing the ones that I find really cool, since this is my blog at I have that right :)

So...let's start with Promo Lions. The Grand Prix went to HBO Voyeur integrated campaign, done by BBDO New York. Campaign's perspective was to strengthen brand loyalty of the super fans of HBO. This was done through a strategy or platform called HBO Voyeur. On different media platforms a house with a wall cut of could be observed so that the spectators could watch what people in the building are doing. Also little pieces of information were scattered around the web about the "inhabitants"of the house to increase the curiosity of the spectators. With this campaign the agency took the act of watching (the integrated part of HBO experience) and made it the vocal point of the campaign. As hbovoyeur.com puts it, everything was done to confront the viewer with the question: "Do you like to watch?". Sounds a bit scary, eh?

If you visit HBO voyeur website you can scroll around the house observing different apartments. The stories you see range from people simply reading their book, to renovating rooms, to even a woman having a baby! Episodes last for about 5 minutes. The Voyeur campaign made it possible for people to track the stories everywhere from life size projection in Manhattan, online website, blogs, TV, to mobile (each of the platforms had specially adjusted content). That's integration!

The campaign had huge success among the super fans, increased positive feelings towards HBO programming, increased brand awareness etc. Successful for sure but I can't help wondering about the "morality"of it. The campaign plays with the massively popular concept of reality shows and people being obsessed with voyeurism. It could be thus said that the campaign simply used what is currently "hot"on TV and made it theirs. Consequently promoting morally questionable behavior of people spying on other people. But on the other hand, it's not HBO's fault people are obsessed with other people and like to watch what's happening in other people's bedrooms. They simply took advantage of it. Good for HBO! And, who am I to talk about the morality of viewers and the voyeurism when I am an addicted viewer of ANTM, Swan, Nanny and others (i think it's stupid and horrible, but I still watch).

So to sum up, I think this is a really cool campaign integrating different media vehicles to promote a brand. Plus during the campaign it makes consumers do exactly what it wants the result to be - watch more TV. Well done!

Other campaigns that won as doing the best promotion in one way or the other are:

- Speight's great beer delivery (client: Lion Nathan, product: Speight's Beer, agency: Publicis Mojo, Auckland): when you put a working pub on a cargo ship and send it to from New Zealand to UK to bring domestic beer to all New Zealanders living in UK, you know you have a great promotion.

- Sense and sensibility deposit (client: Caja Madrid, product: bank account, agency: Shackleton, Madrid): a super cute campaign about how to change your bank without making your previous bank sad and consequently losing a friend. The campaign included postcards with jingles like "Forget me and go away" which could be sent to your previous bank.

- Internet shut down (client: Maor, product: donation organization, agency: Y&R Interactive Tel Aviv): in order to raise awareness for two kigndaped soldier for which all search has stopped, agency recreated a internet shut down. More than 400 major Israeli sites stopped working for five minutes on July 12th, 2007 at 9.05 AM. Instead of "Page not found" users saw "Soldiers not found" page. 65% of Israeli population got exposed to the campaign.

For much more winners from the Promo category, visit the Promo Lions winners site.

Next post will be about the Direct Lions...but till then keep an eye open for more News (TM).