The BBC’s TV show launch in January is always a stand-out, so the ‘stakes’ were high.

The already competitive landscape of broadcast television has faced even more competition in recent years with the rise of streaming services. In order to stand out, the BBC needed to do something dramatic for the launch of Dracula.

Our objectives were:

1. Drive awareness of the series amongst Under 35s.

2. Fuel FOMO and drive conversation around the series launch.

3. Encourage viewing on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.

OOH is an important broadcast channel, proven to build brand fame amongst youth and light TV audiences. Therefore, a key component of our campaign was unmissable, high impact OOH. But we needed to behave in a more distinctive, creative way.

Special builds are proven to resonate with audiences, and we knew that people consider brands who undertake this type of activity as more innovative and exciting and that they drive positive association shifts for the brand.

Having seen success with creative launches using non-standard media for BBC previously, we knew it would be an effective way to drive buzz for the new series amongst youth. Our collective challenge was to create an iconic installation that would bring Dracula out of the shadows and into life.

An initial idea that really stood out was to create a piece of shadow art using 3D wooden stakes and a spotlight. We worked closely with a number of media owners to test new production methods so our creative ambition could be realised and to find the ideal sites, which were head-on to traffic and where our spotlight wouldn’t be shining into roads or nearby residents too brightly. Crucially, we needed sites which were elevated and out of reach but that would achieve great impact and visibility.

Unveiled on 30th December 2019, we installed special builds in elevated sites in Birmingham and London. They comprised of a cluster of strategically placed 3D bloody stakes, and a spotlight fixed to the billboard. The builds were unassuming by day, but as night fell, the Prince of Darkness arose from the stake-impaled canvas. His shadowy silhouette unmissable to passers-by.

We achieved large scale exposure of the show, successfully raising awareness. The special builds received over 320K impacts and ran as part of a wider campaign which delivered 64M impacts in total.

The special builds saw an amazing response from the public, driving enormous earned reach across social and publisher platforms, trending across Reddit’s homepage, with exposure across both the national and industry press.

They saw an estimated 43K social posts, drove reach of 22M and more than 40 articles written about the builds. To put this into context, we achieved over 60% of the chatter volume of the John Lewis Christmas ad, but with only 0.24% of its media spend.

Finally, we delivered strong viewing figures, with episode one of Dracula coming in as the most viewed programme on BBC iPlayer in Q1 (Jan-March 2020) and the one of the most popular new programmes of the year.