Dr. Multiplatform, AETN Presumes
History's 'Expedition Africa' Promotion Allows Viewers To Make Stanley's Trek Via Different Vehicles
Mike Reynolds -- Multichannel News, 5/17/2009 8:45:46 AM
On Expedition Africa, History's eight-part series from Mark Burnett Productions, a team of four explorers will look to follow the journey of Henry Morton Stanley and his quest for the "lost" Dr. David Livingstone.
And History wants Comcast, Time Warner and Cox subscribers to enhance their sense of the trek from Zanzibar to Tanzania via a host of supporting on-demand and broadband content. AETN senior vice president distribution, business development and marketing Mark Garner said the promotion's quest aspires to integrate viewers, affiliate content, the distributors' brands and the programming overall.
"We listened to affiliates and how they wanted to incorporate different platforms," he said. "It also gives viewers a lot more ways to get involved."
With the series debuting on the linear service Sunday May 31 at 10 p.m., digital-cable subscribers will be able to call up the premiere -- in standard or high-definition -- via on-demand the week before. For the subsequent seven installments, they will be able to watch the episodes in the succeeding weeks after their bow on History.
There also will be an array of short on-demand content, including interviews with the explorers and Burnett, a mini-documentary and a navigation element, available at different stages.
The operators' respective broadband services will be home to such video fare as bios of each explorer, a look "Inside the Expedition," survival tips and "Dangers of the Wild" segments.
For its part, History.com will proffer a viral game of chance, choices and selections from Stanley's journals and gorgeous footage of Africa from the series.
Further, Road Runner and Cox.net subscribers will have access to a quiz, wherein participants can at any time win a daily prize and answer five trivia questions. Those getting all five and the video bonus question correct are automatically entered for a chance to win the big "Expedition Survival Challenge Give-Away": a state-of-the-art home theater, comprising an HD TV, Blue ray DVD player and sound system. New questions randomly generate so each play is a new quiz.There's also a "photo hunt" wherein players can test their powers of identification by noting the differences between the images before time runs out. Correct answers spring the next set of photos, with the level of difficulty continually increasing. High scorers go up on the leaderboard with name and photo for bragging rights in the community.
Meanwhile visitors to fancast.net can gaze through a large photo gallery, capturing the spectacular beauty of Africa.
"This is a beginning of a vision of the affiliate marketing team at AETN, where we want to bring brands, viewers, programming and affiliate content together," said Garner, noting the idea is to drive users back and forth between the linear, VOD and broadband content. "We want to keep people within the Expedition Africa ecosystem, make it 360-degree experiential."
"It's really a showcase for the programming and what we want to do with great content on all our platforms," said Comcast vice president of video content Diane Kerekes. "We want our subscribers to be able to watch content whenever and on whatever platform they want to. They can see the premiere of the show on demand [a week] before it's on the linear network. They can see it on fancast.net, and call up or email a friend and say you need to check out these spectacular photos and the show."
Moreover, there's a promotional circularity behind Expedition Africa via tune-in spots on History that also direct watchers to the other platforms. Moreover, there are cues on broadband and on-demand designed to push viewers/users to and fro the related materials. For instance, copy on the different Web sites and postroll after the video clips signify that there is more content on demand, while the VOD features throw watchers back to the Web with mentions of the "Expedition Survival Challenge." Garner said there will be multiple points of entry alerting Web users to the content, via banners at the top of the pages, as well as a branded History.com area.
The process goes into full swing May 24, according to Garner.
Looking ahead, Garner says AETN will "integrate key sponsors into the different platforms," where appropriate.
"We're looking to crawl and walk, before we run," he said.
Or in the case of Expedition Africa, make the content and promotional treks, alongside the modern-day explorers.
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