Find out about this great idea to commemorate the departure of Big Brother whilst providing an extra special treat for advertisers.

Summary

Channel 4 wanted to commemorate Big Brother's finale with a very special break
An entire break in the final week was Big Brother themed
Extremely high level of audience retention achieved throughout the break

The Challenge

Thinking up an ad is easy, but getting your brand talked about in a good way, achieving cut-through, reach, sales and positive feedback is a bit more tricky.

Everyone knows that it's a cluttered market out there. But get your comms strategy right and you can reap the rewards.

The TV Solution

After 11 years, hundreds of housemates, countless arguments and numerous love-ins, Autumn 2010 was the time for the most famous house in Britain to bow out of the limelight. A huge farewell was planned and it was set as the biggest TV event of the year with a substantial marketing plan to boot.

With this in mind, the Big Brother farewell was identified as having huge potential in terms of the opportunities it presented to advertisers.

Channel 4's in-house creative agency produced the break which featured adverts weaved between 5 second clips of iconic Big Brother 'moments', with a specially created Big Brother Eye countdown clock separating out the advertisers' commercials, and the show clips. A sting on the programme side alerted the viewers to look out for the golden moments within the break.

Chris Braithwaite, Strategic Sales Manager at Channel 4 Sales explains, "We've never attempted anything like this before and we liaised with Ofcom as the break is so out of the ordinary".

The forward-thinking brands participating in this brilliant break were Guinness, Niquitin, Sainsbury's, Orange, Absolut Vodka, WKD and Dyson.

The Results

The stats were excellent with audience retention significantly higher for the themed break than the non themed breaks in the rest of the Ultimate Big Brother series.

A fantastic 93% of individuals kept watching the break right through compared to around 83% for the non themed breaks. This is true for individuals, adults, ABC1 adults and 16-34 year olds.

For charts to nick, download the analysis doc at the bottom.

Absolut, one of the brands featured, was approached by Niall Callan, Group Head, Channel 4 Sales to take part in the Big Brother celebration break on 8 September at 21.15.

Simon Reed, Vizeum, said

"we thought it this was a fantastic idea because it connected viewers with Absolut on a higher level. Associating Absolut with one of Channel 4's biggest programming events of the year, meant that the brand achieved excellent cut-through and talkability." He continued, "This is another example of C4 innovating, making ad breaks more engaging for their audiences and in turn more engaging for the brands and advertisers involved."

Chris Braithwaite, Strategic Sales Group Manager at Channel 4 said,

"Big Brother has been good to us, so we wanted to create an ad break with a difference to say goodbye. It will look completely pioneering on screen, and weaving in the classic moments will continue our experimentation with increasing an ad break's 'stickiness' with the viewer"

For more information, please contact Chris.