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April 8, 2002 - Strategy Magazine
Best Media Plan

Winner... best use of interactive media
Targeting the pros: WTN viral campaign enlists buyers to reach buyers

Agency/media company

Taylor George Design

Client

Women's Television Network

Brand

WTN (trade campaign)

Media budget

$20,000 (included $9,000 for prizing)

Media used

Internet

Timing

June 11 to September 30, 2001

Media team

Magda Zachara, media director, Taylor George

The background

The WTN trade campaign was developed to target media planners, buyers and client marketers. We needed to keep WTN top-of-mind during the key up-front media planning and buying period and communicate the benefits of advertising on WTN when targeting women.

The key objectives were:

* Extending the WTN fall launch event in May and supporting WTN sales throughout the summer buying period.

* Reaching primary contacts at agency media departments with a high-impact WTN programming message, raising awareness of new and returning key promotables.

* Keeping WTN top-of-mind for agencies and clients targeting women.

* Developing a database of media planners and buyers for future DM or e-mail communication opportunities.

The key challenges we faced were:

* No existing list or database of media planners and buyers was available and no professional registry is maintained indicating the number of media professionals in Canada.

* There was no budget for hiring a company to develop a list.

* There are no trade publications exclusively targeting media planners and buyers.

* A high turnover rate in large media departments results in a short database shelf life.

The plan

Due to the tight budget and the hard-to-reach target we had to be very creative in our approach, so we developed a Web-based viral campaign. With this campaign we not only met all of our objectives but had the media planners and buyers do most of the work for us. This proved to be a very cost-effective way to promote awareness of WTN programming among this target group.

The WTN Media Challenge

A five-phase Web-based contest was created. Each of the first four phases had a $1,000 shopping spree prize, with the final phase dangling a $5,000 spree (the $9,000 total for prizing came out of the media plan).

New phases were introduced every other week, but we allowed new players to go back to previous phases as well. This ensured that participants were exposed to the WTN programming highlighted in all five phases. The length of this contest also ensured WTN messaging was being disseminated to the media planners throughout key planning and buying months of May through August.

In each of the first four phases, up to five different WTN programs were highlighted. Each participant was challenged to select the show that he or she felt would deliver the highest ratings in fall 2001. Specific target demographics and timing were provided. The winner of each phase was selected randomly from all correct entries for that phase.

The last phase listed all of the programs highlighted to date and challenged participants to rank the top five by predicted rating.

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