HOW COME BBC CANADA GETS IT?
Ad Campaign Promotes EastEnders North of the Border
By Larry Jaffee
TORONTO—Here's something sure to make U.S.-based EastEnders fans envious, or maybe furious.
BBC Canada in December launched a multimedia marketing campaign to promote the British soap opera EastEnders.
Adverts are appearing north of the border on radio, television, transit, mall and online.
Of course, BBC America never thought about doing such a thing before it took EastEnders off its schedule in September 2003.
The campaign, which focuses on the Ontario markets of Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, Ottawa and London, includes television spots on BBC Canada and other Alliance Atlantis stations.
BBC Canada is among numerous channels operated by Alliance Atlantis, a Canadian cable programming and marketing company that unfortunately doesn't do business in the U.S. because BBC America obviously could learn much about marketing from them.
The TV and radio spots each depict shortened versions of the wild storylines featured on the show, which made its debut on British television in 1985.
Steve Rayment, vice president of marketing and publicity for BBC Canada, says the goal of the creative was to capture the show's dramatic energy.
"We're trying to instill the sense that this is a full-tilt, head-over-heels soap opera that's full of all the paternity suits, whodunits and outrageous antics that people look for in this type of programming," says Rayment.
"We've had the show since 2001 and the show has been building over the years. But at the start of last year, we got onto a new expanded subscriber base with Rogers as part of their digital VIP package and we noticed that the numbers started climbing. It just seemed natural that if there were all these people flocking to it without a big marketing push, there's obviously a bigger market for it and we needed to take advantage of that."
All creative for the campaign was developed in-house by BBC Canada.
The BBC CANADA episodes are approximately two years behind those shown in the UK. Eastenders airs on Monday 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. ET, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 12 p.m. to 12:30 p.m. ET and Fridays 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. ET. Saturday morning at 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. and Sundays from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
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