The Telly That Kept Us Talking
Client
Virgin Media
Industry
Telco
Category
Documentary, sponsorship, campaign, social
Summary
TV had never been more important in our lifetimes than in 2020 when COVID-19 put our lives on hold. With 2021’s Virgin Media-sponsored BAFTAs taking place largely without an audience, Virgin Media wanted to bring the country back together by celebrating the TV moments that really mattered to the nation.
Based on sentiment analysis, Virgin Media’s sponsorship of the BAFTA audience award - the ‘Must-See Moment’ - especially boosted the brand’s emotional relationship with consumers. In my role on the Virgin Media account at Redwood BBDO, I worked on an idea from pitch to delivery to rally the nation to vote for their favourite TV shows through The Telly That Kept Us Talking, an integrated content series that spoke to real people about why this year’s nominees meant something more.
With just four days of pre-production, three weeks to concept, shoot and edit and a total budget in five figures, we sent award-winning travel presenter Cassam Looch on a UK-wide road trip to talk to telly obsessives up and down the country.
The numbers spoke for themselves:
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6 UK cities across 7 days, speaking to more than 150 telly lovers
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6 short films and various social assets on each nominee delivered just 7 days later
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The short films were picked up and promoted by nominees such as Mark Hamill and Nicola Coughlan – reaching 20.6M people on social without paid promotion
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21-minute hero film broadcast On Demand for Virgin Media’s customers, leading to more than 5 million OVOD impressions
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And a 90-second edit played during the BAFTA ceremony itself on primetime BBC1
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Visits to vote for the BAFTA award saw a 124% increase year-on-year.
What we did
Our creative strategy focused the spotlight not on the actors nominated, but on real people who love TV. We wanted to find authentic TV fans who would be talking about these shows whether there was a camera or not; voices who wanted to share their love of each nominee and encourage people to vote for them.
With just three weeks before the BAFTA nominees would go live, we entered pre-production, casting 56 TV fans in three days against an ambitious target of visiting six UK-wide cities in three countries across seven days. We would then need to turn around hundreds of hours of footage in less than a week to deliver weekly episodic content around each of the six nominees, alongside supporting social assets, culminating in a 20-minute mini-documentary to be broadcast for Virgin Media customers in BAFTAs week itself. With a tight budget, we needed to deliver TV-quality assets at the speed of social.
Tonally, the year’s nominees told the story of 2020, but were radically different, meaning a narrative approach scoped for each film with human appeal and the breadth and depth to honour each Must-See Moment individually. From the fun and irreverence of Gogglebox reacting to a Boris Johnson press conference and Nigella’s ‘Mee-cro-wavey’ pronunciation to the cultural significance of the internet-breaking reveals in Bridgerton and The Mandalorian, to the pertinent urgency of Black Lives Matter and domestic violence in Britain’s Got Talent and EastEnders respectively.
These films needed to stand out as their own pieces of content, but also work within a set of films, not showing prominence or favouritism to any nominee over the others.
Similarly, with different COVID restrictions in place in different parts of the country, we had to secure permissions to film at iconic British landmarks, recce 24 locations virtually, all before sending a skeleton crew of four, including award-winning travel presenter Cassam Looch, on the road under strict COVID filming protocols. They travelled thousands of miles, eventually speaking to more than 150 TV fans in the process.
As soon as the shoot finished, we had to edit fast to meet the immovable deadline of the BAFTA nominees and voting going live, simultaneously working on the six episodes, social cuts and 20-minute hero film, all while working remotely. The deliverables also changed in the edit to include a piece of OVOD content to drive a tune-in message for the BAFTAs themselves. We worked at a level of efficiency beyond any traditional agency model.
So impressed were BAFTA by the content they were overseeing during approvals, they asked Virgin Media for their own cut for the awards ceremony itself. So we were instructed just three days before broadcast to create and edit a 90-second video featuring the nation talking about the Must-See Moment nominees, to be featured before the citation reader announced the winner on primetime BBC One.
