Tuesday, 15 May 2012 07:30

Ad of the Month - Alcatraz Delivery

What gives you a better experience than just giving you the experience? Many times when I watch TV shows, I can't stop wondering what if it happens to me. This time, thanks to a great ad agency, audiences can really experience part of a TV show for themselves.

To promote the first season of Alcatraz to Spanish audiences, Leo Burnett chose to bring the incarceration experience into viewers’ homes. Instead of relying on a 30 second slot to advertise the show, the agency created a fast food delivery line called Alcatraz Delivery, an actual prison food delivery service.

As the video shows, orders could be placed by phone or on the website and were delivered by one of the prisoners who was accompanied by a police officer in a police van. Each order contained a tray of prison food and an entire dossier containing information about the show and the premier on the TV station laSexta.

It is both the creativity and the thoroughness that makes this promotion FiG's favorite of the month. Although Fox decided to cancel the second season of the show, Alcatraz was the most watched premier of the season with 4.8 million viewers. We believe the experiential promotion played a major part in the success.

Marketers have long argued about the importance of the brand marketing experience: The smell, the color, the shape, the first moment of truth for a product, etc. Being able to consider all the facets that customers may weigh in an experience is difficult, especially for an intangible product or service. In this case, the fact that the Leo Burnett team was able to deliver a tangible in an unexpected way is particularly impressive.

Furthermore, when creating a marketing experience, sometimes the connection between the creative concept and the product/service is not as strong as we hope to see. Audiences may remember a funny campaign but may not be able to correctly associate it to the right brand or product. The capability of leveraging and delivering a widely-known but rarely understood experience and the TV show cohesively is why we make it the ad of the month.

FiG understands the subtleties to introducing create a marketing experience. Our creative offerings might be just what you need!