Melvyn Bragg, Terry Venables, Julian Clary and David Attenborough
are among the famous faces chosen to launch ONdigital this weekend as
part of a #10 million advertising blitz which will run through to
Christmas.
The first TV advertising for the channel kicked off on Wednesday night
with a four-day burst of teaser ads showing a line-up of celebrities
getting ready in the make-up department for their star turn.
The full campaign launches this weekend with the celebrities paired up
to sell the benefits of the ONdigital proposition. Ulrika Jonsson teams
up with David Ginola to deliver an ad in Swedish and French, with
subtitles.
Chris Tarrant turns the tables on the usually eloquent Melvyn Bragg in
another execution while Julian Clary is pitched against The Bill’s tough
guy, DI Burnside.
The BMP DDB ads, created by Paul Burke and directed by Richard Phillips
through RJ Phillips, will top and tail ad breaks, with 40-second and
ten-second executions. The ads will run for the next six months. Media
buying is by New PHD.
TV and outdoor activity is being concentrated in London, along with a
year-long London taxi campaign, in a bid to nurture demand for the
80,000 set-top boxes which will be available in shops in the run-up to
Christmas.
The ads will roll out gradually across the rest of the country over the
next few weeks.
As well as the new TV work, ONdigital will be sponsoring all of LWT’s
non-peak programming this weekend, and has produced branded wraparounds
for the Mirror and Telegraph listings magazines on Saturday and for the
Mail on Sunday’s listings supplement. The listings pages themselves will
carry the ONdigital colours and small space ads for the service.
Marc Sands, the brand director of ONdigital, said the ads were designed
to keep the digital message simple. ’ONdigital is all about simplicity
and flexibility.
By using celebrities, the ads position ONdigital as the natural
inheritor of popular television.’
