Akron-Canton Airport is mimicking a popular cable television show to promote its new and improved transportation services, and the video it’s producing to that end is going to be available on its website. But to get people to go there and watch will require a little something extra. And that involves some TV time.
The cable show being imitated is A&E’s “Intervention.” In the airport’s video, a character named Punchy, a sad clown made that way by dealing with the transportation system, will be put through a session in which others try to get him to give up his habit of using crowded difficult-to-navigate airports and use the much better services of Akron-Canton instead. As A-CA describes Punchy, “All of his traveling through big airports, the stress and the confusion, has taken a toll on him… and his family. It is time for an intervention!”
However, the campaign highlights the problem of relying on the internet alone. Before the public can learn about the airport from the video, they have to learn about the video. A-CA said, “To promote the video, six :15 teaser ads will also hit TV stations and popular web sites in Northeast Ohio including www.cleveland.com, www.fox8.com, www.newsnet5.com, and www.wkyc.com today.”
RBR-TVBR observation: The ongoing importance of the mass audience delivered by broadcasters is underscored once again. Sure it may be on the internet, but if you don’t know where, or that the video exists at all, it may as well NOT exist at all. In this case, not only television stations, but the websites of televisions, are a necessary part of the campaign.
