New Banner Revives the Classics

Firefox compatible

Client: Turner Classic Movies
Technology Vendor: Klipmart

Turner Classic Movies wanted to promote 31 Days of Oscar, which is the network's annual month long on-air event of Oscar-nominated and award winning movies leading up to the Oscars. To accomplish this, they worked with Klipmart to build an elaborate microsite-style ad unit with a complete calendar of the 360 movies to be broadcast during the 31 days. The daily schedule gives the times for each movie across a five-week period. This also included the option for email reminders for the person viewing the ad, as well as the option to email a friend with this information. Utilization of those reminders and viral marketing further magnified the impact of this ad unit. Additionally, the ad unit offered users the chance to watch classic movie scenes or download e-cards and wallpaper. Overall, the ad provides a wealth of scheduling information, while illustrating the variety of memorable films available during these 31 days.
-- Chris Wilson, director of marketing, Klipmart

Creative Showcase is meant to be a teaching tool and an inspiration for our readers. We comment only on creative that we really love. Our panelists discuss what makes it great, but if they feel there were missed opportunities that would have made it better, we invite them to mention those. And finally, we seek out a wide range of opinions that reflect the marketplace for the panel, in order to provide constructive, useable feedback for agencies, clients and others involved in these creative pieces.

This banner has one feature I have never seen in an entertainment banner or site: the ability to send yourself a schedule of the movies you want to see. Simple idea, but brilliant if you are like me and you forget that you would love to see that flick again.

When I first explored this piece, I thought it was pretty solid, maybe a bit ambitious on amount of content, but with the addition of weekly schedules to peruse and send yourself, not bad. Then I checked out the website, which was remarkably strong. So I looked at the banner again, and saw it in a different light, from messaging, user experience and aesthetic. There are many small information design and usability issues in this piece as the layout and focus are cluttered and have too many levels of visual hierarchy. More is not always more when it comes to brand experience. Simplicity breeds clarity, focus breeds usability and when combined like they are on the TCM site make for compelling and memorable interaction.

So big points again for the "email the schedule" feature, but using the approach from the site and distributing that to me in an ad would have strengthened the unit. We, as agencies and marketers, need to start looking at how we build and develop digital marketing objects that can be reused or redistributed across multiple delivery types. Down the road that can create an efficiency that will allow us greater investment in content development and user experience that can have multiple uses garnering increased reach and impact of marketing experiences.
-- Glen Sheehan, creative director, Wunderman

What's better than an ad with a classic movie clip? How about a banner with about eight classic movie clips? To boot, Klipmart's piece for TCM tells you when the movies are running and provides the terrific functionality to email yourself a schedule. This is terrific for people like me who are busy, busy, busy and have made an art of using the email inbox as a priority organizer.
 
Another thing worth mentioning is the sound. The ad rolls without the sound at first; the user must request it-- which is terrific. I realize auto-sound is less common in ads these days, but as long as I keep getting annoyed by the few ads that do, I'll take every chance to congratulate those that do not!
 
One thing I'd like to see Klipmart do the next time around is let users know, before they click on a link, they'll be whisked off to a landing page for the advertiser. This happened occasionally as I explored the ad.
-- Mario Sgambelluri, managing editor, iMedia Communications