“Bearing Witness”, a short film produced by The Times, tells the story of two Times journalists who were kidnapped whilst covering a story in the Middle East. Homeland series 4, told the story of character Saul Berenson’s kidnap in the Middle East. The Times introduced their paid for digital membership five years ago and have enjoyed considerable success. So, to maintain this momentum and to also drive general sales and brand perceptions, they briefed a few media owners to see if we could help.
The Day The Times took Homeland Hostage
The Big Idea
The brief had all the information you’d expect: benefits of a membership, details of the new ad, target audience - you know the drill. However, there was a lone bullet point that stood out to us, particularly worthy of some highlighter ink:
“A series of short docs have been made called the Unquiet Minds films. These should be integrated into the partnership. We’re open to ideas as to how they can be used.”
“Unquiet Minds” had a similar feel to our own “Born Risky” mantra and the more we watched the more it became clear that it shouldn’t be integrated into the partnership, it should be the partnership. Within the series was a film “Bearing Witness”. A true story of Times journalists Anthony Lloyd and Jack Hill, kidnapped in Syria whilst reporting on a barrel bombing story (they’re fine now by the way). The more we watched…“Jack’s gone one way, I’ve gone another way. I then get shot. Twice” …the more we thought to ourselves that this … “I wasn’t completely surprised to be tied up and put in a boot”…sounded less like real life and more like something from Homeland.
Homeland, one of our biggest shows. Homeland, one of the highest indexing shows for The Times ABC1, opinion forming audience.
Straightaway, we shifted our focus on the brief to focus on this amazing content, pitching what had the potential to be a perfect alignment of advertising and editorial. We proposed creating a Director’s cut of “Bearing Witness” that would take over the entire ad break in Homeland, generating huge stand out and talkability. Both agency and client loved the idea and, with a major storyline in Homeland due to be the kidnap of a key character, we got the green light. Some things are just meant to be.
Making it Happen
The whole of C4 got behind the campaign. C4 Marketing and Production helped us create an on-air teaser spot, along with an introduction to the takeover itself. By including the C4 logo and using our own channel announcer, it emulated our programme trailers. It didn’t stop there. In a real coup for The Times, the C4 Editorial team even got involved, promoting the activity to our 12 million registered users in our programme highlights newsletter and Tweeting about it (such editorial backing is usually reserved for our biggest rating shows). The Times did the same, sending out a promotional email, putting mock Telegrams in the post to their members, and even ran an ad in the Sunday Times directing people to Homeland that night to see the exclusive Unquiet Minds film.
We’d done our homework and placed the takeover in an episode that was dominated by the kidnap storyline -the break was bookended by these scenes.
The Results
The campaign exceeded all expectations. The Monday-Wednesday following the takeover saw a week-on-week increase in newspaper sales of 16%. In fact, they had their biggest Monday and Tuesday of the year and November sales targets were smashed by 18%.
Traffic to the Unquiet Minds site more than trebled the next day, with over 4,000 visits and positive perceptions of The Times increased by 23%. Finally, 18% of those who saw the takeover claimed to have subscribed to the Times since, with 31% stating their intent to do so.
