March 30, 2009

CableFAXIES Awards—Viral Marketing Campaign: The Sportsman Channel for Cable Best Friends Forever

Speaker ribbons at conferences have a certain allure for some, so The Sportsman Channel played a variation on that theme during CTAM Summit ’08 — team members wore mysterious "CBFF" ribbons (cable best friends forever) in different colors on their Summit badges. Naturally, attendees inquired about the plumage. They were told of a viral campaign where the first 25 cable affiliates to collect 5 ribbons (one from each Sportsman rep) would win an iPod Touch. Some operators scouted restaurants and hid in hotel lobbies, er, hunting for Sportsman reps with the right color ribbons.

Back to CableFAXIES Awards 2009

Honorable Mentions:

BBC America for Skins: BBC America turned to YouTube, MySpace and Twitter for Skins, drumming up a 160-times + increase in searches for the series.

CMT for Gone Country 3: Viewers became the stars in an online campaign for Gone Country 3, personalizing their blogs and Facebook pages with videos of themselves.

Discovery Communications/Animal Planet for Groomer Has It Series Launch: To reach tech-savvy women, Animal Planet created viral videos dubbed "Cryer," "Shaver" and "Loser" and also promoted Groomer on pop culture sites such as Gawker and Jezebel.

A&E Network for What Happened in Piedmont? A&E tapped into the alternate reality game trend for its hit miniseries The Andromeda Strain by building story lines from the program into an online game and letting viewers interact virtually.

Back to CableFAXIES Awards 2009