Time Warner Cable Promo Puts You In The Biopic
Users Can Create Their Own Mock Celebrity Exposés at 'Fame Star!'
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 10/20/2008 12:01:00 PM
Time Warner Cable is letting Internet users star in a celebrity tabloid TV segment of their own devising, in a viral-video campaign to promote the operator’s triple play.
The cable operator’s Fame Star! site lets visitors upload their own photos and create a one-minute mock celebrity exposé, while choosing a story arc that includes level of success, scandal and tragedy. The resulting “biopic” can then be shared with friends or posted to a social-networking site.
Each video clip is prefaced by a 20-second ad promoting Time Warner Cable’s video, phone and Road Runner broadband services. The Fame Star! site also includes a link to TWC’s competitive marketing comparison with Verizon FiOS, AT&T U-verse and satellite providers.
Ad agency Ogilvy New York came up with the Fame Star! concept, which was produced with technology provider Oddcast.
“Time Warner Cable gives its customers control of all their in-home entertainment options,” Time Warner Cable vice president of marketing Lisa Stockmon said, in a statement. “This new viral video is a fun way to show the connection between our brand and our consumers’ ability to control and create their own forms of entertainment.”
Time Warner Cable said it will promote Fame Star! through its own Web sites, social media sites and other online properties.
A jokey disclaimer statement on the site says it is “best viewed using Road Runner High Speed Online. Neither Time Warner Cable nor its subsidiaries can be held responsible for any hair pulling, fist banging, or name-calling caused by painfully slow DSL connections.”
