Cannes Lions 2007 Media Gold - GET SCARED MORE OFTEN

Name	Position	Company
Stephen Leps/Aaron Starkman	Creative Directors	zig
Stephen Leps	Art Director	zig
Aaron Starkman	Copywriter	zig
Sheri Hachey/Lynn Sivec/Carlie Naftolin	Account Supervisors	zig
Graydon Sheppard	Director	UNTITLED
James Davis/Tom Evelyn	Producers	UNTITLED
Johnny Cliff	Director of Photography	UNTITLED
John Evans	Editor	Panic and Bob Editing
Ted Rosnick/Vlad Nickolic	Sound Design	Rosnick MacKinnon Webster
Justin Poy	Special Effects	The Justin Poy Agency

The perception in Canada is that Scream TV only offers slasher movies like Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. The reality is Scream offers more intellectual mainstream movies like The 6th sense. We wanted people to know that these types of movies are on and often. In order to get people to remember the message, we developed an approach that would give them a real-life thrill. Instead of buying billboard space, we rented a house in a high pedestrian-traffic area. Then we proceeded to direct thousands more to this house through viral videos, blogging and invading chat rooms as well as sending emails.

For three weeks in September, people in Toronto witnessed something they had never seen before. In an old Victorian house window, they saw a ghost of a little girl. She would skip from window to window, braid her hair, run, look down, and perform a total of forty different actions. We used a holographic projector to illuminate her and within days, it was standing room only outside the house. Everyone wanted to catch a glimpse her.

It started out with ghost in a house, within days it seemed as though everyone in Toronto had heard about it. People got emails from desperate ghost hunters-or so they thought, chat rooms were hijacked with a link to a video of the ghost, and then discussions arose about her. We took part in these discussions. We revealed it was for Scream Tv, live at the location, in a television spot, and online.

It cost just $5,000 CDN to rent the house. What ensued was over 2.1 million hits on the internet, thousands of people showing up to the house, major national media coverage(i.e. The National Post), and an immediate subscription increase of 29%.