Case Studies

Purpose

Lifetime Television Network had outbid Bravo TV Network to the rights to the popular TV show Project Runway.  Lifetime wanted to promote the show aggressively nationwide to its audience and to entice new viewership to the show.

Plan

Lifetime Television Network’s idea was to run a 13-week interactive sweepstakes campaign to promote the Project Runway show and also the show’s main sponsors, L’Oreal and Garnier.  There would be weekly winners and prizes; plus a grand winner at the conclusion of the campaign.  During the campaign, Project Runway’s sponsors would also interact with the visitors to the micro site.

Solution

Because of Lifetime Television Network’s success with Contest Factory on a previous campaign for Lifetime’s Nora Roberts television mini-series, Lifetime (through its agency) once again partnered with Contest Factory and its proven interactive sweepstakes platform to engage the large viewership of Project Runway.  Viewers would visit the Contest Factory-built Project Runway micro site and register, watch and vote on new video clips each week with the option to refer friends and answer sponsors’ survey questions.  In addition, Contest Factory embedded viral media tools to help increase reach.  To monitor the campaign’s effectiveness Contest Factory’s Viral DNA^TM tracking and reporting software provided Lifetime with real-time data to monitor the performance of this huge promotion.

Results

Contest Factory’s implementation of the Project Runway micro site mirrored and supported the show’s success on the Lifetime network.  While Lifetime’s Project Runway season premiere drew 4.2 million viewers, a 45% increase compared to the previous season on Bravo, Contest Factory’s state-of-the-art cloud network would serve millions of page views to hundreds of thousands of unique site visitors.

Contest Factory’s Viral DNA^TM tracking and reporting software provided Lifetime with real-time registration, viral sharing information, and newsletter opt-in data.  Viral DNA^TM was also used in real time to provide Project Runway sponsors, L’Oreal and Garnier, with real-time response to their product surveys as well as user opt-in data for sending free product samples and coupons to the consumers.