Channel 4's Ford Bite - Winner of Commercial Partnership Award 2008

With a fresh, fun approach using multiple touchpoints online, Bite by Channel 4 delivered a clear understanding Ford’s principle brand objectives.

Detailed research and fast-paced production schedules enabled weekly online-only ad-funded shows to share upcoming trends and keep viewers ahead of the media/fashion/celebrity savvy pack.

The project’s reach demonstrated a strong connection of one vision through vibrant and inspiring content, with excellent results for the client.

Key Objectives

• Make young women feel positive about Ford small cars
• Develop a community for this market and gain sales
• Ignite demand for the Fiesta and Ka brands, showcasing their modern styling and cheeky, sociable, fun personality

What Channel 4 did

• Produced a weekly online show for 6 months which featured five girls and their Ford Fiestas / Kas, reporting on underground trends across the UK
• Designed and produced a microsite which hosted the programmes and background info on the girls, their cars and their respective blogs
• Designed and served co-branded traffic drivers across Channel4.com. These traffic drivers were also served across Yahoo and Bauer sites

Understanding of market

Channel 4 has a very unique and special relationship with the hard-to-reach youth market. Ford was very keen to leverage the broadcaster’s brand values in order to communicate to this switched-on group of people in the right tone and manner.

How C4 worked with the agency, the production company and other media owners:

• Worked alongside Heat magazine to produce weekly exposés focussing on the Bite girls throughout the campaign period
• Worked with both Bauer and Yahoo to create a Bite splash page and branded traffic drivers to attract users back to the Bite website
• The Bite girls had their own Facebook profiles, which they updated each week to help promote the show
• Over 30% of Bite’s traffic ended up coming via Facebook, MySpace and Google sites

Innovation

Bite was a hugely inspirational and innovative piece of work:

• Bite was the first ever weekly online-only ad-funded entertainment show
• The format of the show was unique and carefully crafted, tailor-made for the web
• Detailed research and fast-paced production schedules were key to producing a show which shows upcoming trends, relevant and engaging content for its highly media-savvy and switched-on audience
• Bite utilised audio and visual technologies to bring about a clear understanding of Ford’s principle brand objectives
• Bite’s single message was communicated through the creation of multi-platform, sub groups
• Its reach demonstrated a strong connection of one vision through vibrant and inspiring content, and clever, but pertinent use of multiple platforms and social media
• Bite offered in excess of 6 touch points, utilising C4, Heat, Yahoo, Facebook, MySpace, iTunes

Success against objectives

Microsite Results

• Page Impressions: over 2.7 million
• Site Visits: over 1.3 million
• Unique users: over 890k
• Returning users (bite fans): over 420k
• Average time spend on site: 5.38 mins
• Video plays: over 2.2million
• Average dwell time: 5-6 mins
• Average play: 70-80%

Exceeding expectations

• Bite managed to get backstage with the Hollyoaks cast to uncover underground trends in Liverpool
• Bite was promoted in key areas throughout the Hollyoaks site
• Bite listed as most popular podcast of the week by iTunes

Ford were so delighted with the results they have further invested over another 6 figure sum in series 2 which is now running on www.channel4.com/bite.

Judges’ Comments

"A tough brief which they responded to in a creative way. Results are persuasive, and the project has been recommissioned. A complex, multi-layered relationship with clear commercial success."

For more information, please contact:
Suzy Doyle - Channel 4 Commercial Manager.

Further info on integrated solutions offered by Channel 4.
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