Discovery Channel Case Study: Creative IntegrationPublished: August 2010 | By Yahoo!
In
its epic new television series LIFE, Discovery Channel showcases never
before seen creatures and the behaviors they adopt to survive and
thrive. Because LIFE is like no other show on TV, Yahoo! created a
digital advertising campaign unlike any other.
The Challenge
Discovery
Channel needed to drive viewers to tune in with an awareness campaign
of unprecedented scope and creativity for its LIFE television event. A
ground-breaking 11-part series narrated by Oprah Winfrey, LIFE featured
never-before-used filming techniques to capture animals, habitats and
behaviors never previously witnessed by humans. Discovery began building
buzz for LIFE with key influencers through VIP screenings in Los
Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C., as well as blogger events in
smaller theaters all over the country.
“LIFE was the biggest show
Discovery had done since Planet Earth so we wanted the promotion to be
big and forward, because it truly represented an epic moment for the
channel,” says Donna Murphy, vp of marketing for Discovery. “With LIFE,
we needed to creatively ignite passion—for the show, for the creatures,
for the natural history—with the broadest audience possible.”
The
cable channel and its media agency PHD wanted to translate the
“metamorphosis” idea at the heart of the show into its promotional
media. By conveying the sensation that the advertising was constantly
adapting to whatever the user was doing, Discovery felt the user would
be drawn in by the true essence of the show.
“We felt from a
media standpoint that digital—since it’s ever changing, ever evolving
and extremely dynamic—was the best medium to deliver the kind of
interactivity, iconic imagery and feeling of curiosity that Discovery
wanted,” says Jeffrey Liang, group digital director at PHD. “Yahoo! was
selected as one of our digital partners for its extensive reach, its
rich media capabilities in search and its creative ability to build
first-of-its-kind ad concepts.”
Discovery Channel Case Study: Creative Integration
The Solution
Just
as the LIFE television series presented the unexpected across
continents, species and stages of development, Yahoo! worked with PHD
and Discovery to bring the LIFE experience online in unexpected ways
across a variety of unique-to-Yahoo! placements. Discovery also broke
advertising conventions with unique executions in a completely
integrated campaign that included:
- Custom Home Page and Floating Ad Elements
- Rich Ads in Search
- Mail Tandem Units
- Messenger Program
- Y! Sports Roadblock and NCAA Scoreboard Sponsorship
- Mobile Front Page Roadblocks
- Yahoo! News One-click and Yahoo! TV Take Over
“I think the thing that the Yahoo! team did best was really understand our objectives,” Liang says. “They knew how to use Yahoo! properties and the strengths of each of those properties to match up to our precise needs.”
Yahoo! fundamentally redefined its digital canvas to create a customized solution for Discovery. The LIFE campaign included a number of creative “firsts” on Yahoo!, starting with non-user-initiated ad elements that floated from the edge of the page across the Yahoo! home page towards the 300x250 ad. Throughout the day of the LIFE premiere, everyone who visited the Yahoo! home page could select a LIFE-themed “wallpaper” design that stayed visible each time the user returned to that page, which on average is 4-6 times a day. This marked one of the first times Yahoo! created a custom home page with floating ad elements, delivering a revolutionary user experience to drive engagement and curiosity.
Rich Ads in Search
One of Discovery’s top priorities was to make sure that the beautiful photographs and videos were pushed out across all of its online advertising. “It was very difficult to do that with the traditional ad specs of most sites, especially search where ads are text-based” Liang says. “But Yahoo!‘s Rich Ads in Search allowed us to showcase our videos in search results.”
When users searched for LIFE on Yahoo! Search, Rich Ads in Search returned results with top placement on the page along with deep links and a video to draw the user in. When a user clicked on the video, the ad expanded to display hi-def content from the show. This placement not only allowed Discovery to showcase its video footage but it also required no additional expense since it simply featured repurposed assets.
Mail Tandem Units
In a first ever for an entertainment advertiser, Discovery featured LIFE in tandem video ad units on the Yahoo! Mail welcome page. Tandem ad units draw the user in by framing the top right corner of the screen and creating a cohesive visual message. The vibrant imagery of the LIFE creatures evoked the precise sense of the dynamic, interactive natural world captured on the television show.
Messenger Program
The LIFE campaign tapped into the viral and social potential of Yahoo! Messenger, giving users the ability to:
- Change their icon to adopt the different animals featured in the series as their Yahoo! Messenger display image
- Share video from LIFE with users on their Yahoo! Messenger buddy list
- Update Yahoo! Messenger status to express interest in the video (For example, “Check out this preview of the new series LIFE on Discovery Channel.”)
Sports, News and TV
“Reach was the one of the top priorities for this campaign because we wanted to make sure the message got across to as many people as possible. We knew with Yahoo! as a partner we’d have the capability to reach a lot of people,” says Liang.
Discovery used two unique placements to drive both targeting and scale goals. First, LIFE was featured on the Yahoo! Sports home page, building awareness with men, a core demographic for the channel. LIFE also sponsored the NCAA Scoreboard on Yahoo! Sports on March 21—the day of the show’s premiere and right in the thick of March Madness. Additional placements on Yahoo! news and Yahoo! TV further extended the reach and drove intent to tune in.
Mobile Home Page Roadblocks
Discovery also strategically leveraged Yahoo!’s reach in mobile to connect with natural history lovers wherever and whenever. On March 20-21, LIFE was featured on the Yahoo! Mobile home page in an expandable ad placement. Once again the arresting imagery from the show took center stage. Best of all, the placement helped Discovery target the highly desirable 25-54 age demographic.
Discovery used two unique placements to drive both targeting and scale goals. First, LIFE was featured on the Yahoo! Sports home page, building awareness with men, a core demographic for the channel. LIFE also sponsored the NCAA Scoreboard on Yahoo! Sports on March 21—the day of the show’s premiere and right in the thick of March Madness. Additional placements on Yahoo! news and Yahoo! TV further extended the reach and drove intent to tune in.
The Results
Discovery garnered record ratings, reaching 33.8 million viewers. 11.2 million viewers tuned in to the first episode of the series. The LIFE premiere was the network’s most watched premiere since “Walking with Dinosaurs” and “Raising the Mammoth” in 2000.
Yahoo! partnered with Nielsen’s Cross-Platform Panel, a single-source panel measuring in-home TV and Internet usage, to uncover the direct effects of the Yahoo! campaign on viewership.* It found that the campaign reached an incremental audience that was high quality and much more likely to tune in to LIFE when exposed to both the Yahoo! and TV ads:
- Those reached by the Yahoo! campaign were 28% more likely to watch Discovery LIFE than those not exposed
- Those reached on both Yahoo! and TV were 78% more likely to watch
- 8.1 million adults were reached by the Yahoo! campaign that were not reached by the TV campaign
Most impressive of all, those exposed to the Yahoo! takeover accounted for 14% of the Discovery LIFE TV audience!
“At first blush, you come to Yahoo! for reach. Then you get into it and they bring real creativity and flexibility to the table too. We partnered collaboratively to create ad executions that had never been done before anywhere and used a broad array of Yahoo!’s offerings such as messenger, mail and mobile. This is certainly the most ambitious, most integrated digital campaign Discovery’s ever executed,” says Murphy.
About Discovery Channel: Discovery Channel is dedicated to creating the highest quality non-fiction content that informs and entertains its viewers across genres including: science and technology, exploration, adventure and history. The network, which is distributed to 100 million U.S. homes, can be seen in over 180 countries.
About PHD: The PHD Network is part of the Omnicom Media Group, a division of Omnicom Group Inc. Omnicom is a leading global marketing and corporate communications company. PHD is an innovator in communications design and execution with 2,000 employees in over 60 countries.
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