Nbc Universal: "I KILL A FRIEND.COM" Online Advert by BETC Euro Rscg

Type of entry: Product & Service
Category: Publications & Media
Advertiser: NBC UNIVERSAL
Product/Service: TV NETWORK
Agency: BETC EURO RSCG Paris, FRANCE
Executive Creative Director: Stéphane Xiberras (BETC Euro RSCG)
Account Supervisor: Raphael De Andreis (BETC Euro RSCG)
Advertiser's Supervisor: Leonor Grandsire (NBC UNIVERSAL)
Director: Nicolas Benamou (BETC Euro RSCG)
Creative Director: Olivier Apers (BETC Euro RSCG)
Creative Director: Christophe Clapier, Ivan Beczkowski (BETC Euro RSCG)
Account Manager: Christophe Neyret, Sofiane Ben Chaabane (BETC Euro RSCG)
Motion design and Flash developement: Silvère Maréchal (BETC Euro RSCG)
Flash development: Jérémy Boutier (BETC Euro RSCG)
Development: Abder Zeghoud (BETC Euro RSCG)
TV Producer: Michel Teicher (BETC Euro RSCG)
Sound Production: (LGM)
Production Company: (Dak Tirak)
Web supervisor: Eugénie Valletoux (BETC Euro RSCG)
Planner: Julien Delatte (BETC Euro RSCG)
Describe the brief from the client:
13ème RUE is a cable network channel, specialising in crime and investigation entertainment. The average age of its audience is 50+ years and dangerously rising.
We needed to attract a younger audience: the 20-35.To connect with this media savvy audience with no media budget, we had to reach them in a highly personalised way.
The objective was to create a direct response campaign to plunge each individual contacted into their own personal 13ème RUE experience, and motivate them to involve their friends.
Our objective - to reach 1 million people; a tough objective for a channel like 13ème Rue.
Creative Execution:
The striking realism of the assassination scenes and the human need for taking revenge, once you get killed by a friend, made the campaign highly contagious: allowing us to reach a record 22 million contacts and over a million assassination on jetueunami.com after only 6 months!
All that with no media budget to support the online direct campaign.
This meant a record cost per contact of 0.01 euro.
And more importantly this meant a dramatic audience increase among our designated target: in those 6 months the audience of 13ème Rue increased by 25% among 20-35 year olds.
Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.
We turned the most basic DM tool –email- into the most involving call to action ever. With an email carrying a video of your own assassination no less.
This email leads you to jetueunami.com (ikillafriend.com), the first online virtual assassination and investigation service, relying on each individual to promote 13ème RUE to their friends… by killing them!
You choose a hitman, provide your friend’s email and photo, and in a few seconds the website generates and sends your friend a movie-like crime sequence of themselves being assassinated.
After a short investigation, if your friend solves whodunnit, you will receive an email informing you that you have been arrested.
A press release and screen shots of the website were sent out as well.
Describe the results in as much detail as possible.
As someone famously remarked, “An eye for an eye”... The striking realism of the assassination scenes and the human need for taking revenge makes the campaign highly contagious. The fact that each message is created by a friend makes it highly involving. Even more so as you have to investigate to find out which friend hired the killer.
For our target audience, this was not perceived as a marketing campaign but as a piece of entertaining content, allowing them to interact and have fun with their friends. This approach was specifically relevant for 13ème Rue as it allowed people to experience the thrill of the investigations they can watch on the channel.