“It is an answer to the call for originality by major marketers, like SAB, who are constantly pursuing new ways of activating their brands in the lives of their consumers,” says Kessel.
“In this particular case we disrupted the one-way TV medium and allowed the normally passive audience to take part in an interactive and graphic demonstration of a brand’s promise.”
What makes this campaign different is that the audience gets to choose the ending of each story by voting for what Dex Dube should do - for what his ‘right choice’ should be - and this determines how the programme will proceed, culminating in a conclusion created, as it were, by the voters.
Detective Dex Dube is the hero of these three minute-long concentrated TV episodes. In each episode, Dex faced with a moral dilemma and forced to choose between two possible courses of action. Does he, for example, (A) interview the dying witness in a murder case or (B) leave the work until tomorrow in the hope that the witness will still be around - because he’s promised to meet his girl and propose?
“The idea came off the strong positioning of the brand,” says Kessel.
“What’s unsaid in Castle Lite’s brand promise is that the right choice will always lead to a brighter future - and in the same way, Crossroads is about making the right choice for one’s self and not necessarily about what’s morally right or wrong.”
Kessel says that the series couldn’t exist in isolation; it is therefore backed up with above- and below-the-line campaigns which focus sharply on each individual episode or choice. In order to increase the excitement, various small incentives (cellphones, air time, etc.) are offered to randomly-chosen viewers who vote by SMS.
“Castle Lite considers its target market to be rich black men with a strong awareness of what it means to make responsible choices. We have therefore employed extensive in-tavern and in-store activations - including placing on-the-ground collateral like point-of-sale displays and bringing television sets into bars so that patrons can watch the series.”
Print advertising is confined to the daily press, he says, while a 15-second tag-on to Castle Lite’s existing 45-second TV commercial reminds viewers of the moral problem which Dex faced last week. The entire campaign is rounded out by the distribution of web links for downloading individual episodes and by a strong radio presence.
“Besides placing normal commercial slots, we also provide DJs with copies of each episode and a brief about the dilemma that it poses,” says Kessel. “This allows them to engage the audience in 5- to 10-minute discussions about the choices that Dex must face - a classic one being, of course, the ‘career-over-love-life’ problem we saw in episode 1.”
Crossroads was produced by Curious Pictures, produced by David Jammy and directed by Donovan Marsh and has been flighting on SABC 1 at 7.25pm on Thursday evenings since 25 January 2007. The last episode will be on 29 March.
