Situation:

Prime TV competes with bigger, better-funded rivals for its share of audience. So securing the rights to a show like Planet Earth II was its big chance to steal viewers away from its competitors.

However, there were limited funds for promoting the show. And to make things more challenging, the season premiere was going head-to-head with a top-rating reality franchise on another channel.

To succeed, we needed to steal some of that audience.

Brief:

Generate sufficient interest in the new Planet Earth II TV series to capture 4% audience share, particularly from 16-34 year-olds.

Objectives:

Secure 4% audience share (we achieved 8%)

Budget:

Activation / event and shoot: NZD $190k

Project scale and volume:

Experiential event taking over a 5.9-hectare city park. Content captured from the event was then shared on social media.

This 360-degree, sensory ambush was created entirely with sound and footage from the actual show. The BBC’s original sound stems were used to construct a 3D soundscape tuned to the park location, that not only physically located individual animal sounds, but enabled them to ‘travel’ around the target area in a convincing way – creating the impression of being caught in the middle of an epic stampede and lion hunt.

Projections on concealed, low-visibility screens heightened the sensory experience by giving the audience fleeting glimpses of running animals. Projecting these images through ambient smoke effects cast realistic shadows on the ground, heightening the suspension of disbelief.