Boxes and Condoms
The BBC have two projects at the moment that I think are pretty amazing. One is about a container travelling the world, the other is about promoting safe sex through ring tones, different, but both demonstrate great uses of technology that brands can learn from.
With The Box, the BBC has branded a 40′ container, loaded it up with a GPS gadget and are going to be tracking it around the world for a year, taking a look at global trade.
A few months ago, we in the Business and Economics Unit were set the challenge to come up with a way of telling the real story of what’s happening in the global economy in a tangible, challenging and ambitious way that worked for television, online and radio.
BBC’s The BoxWhat we came up with was the idea of following a shipping container around the world for a year, as it criss-crosses the globe with its various cargoes and telling the stories behind those goods, those who make them and those who consume them.
The Box can be tracked via the map – as I write this, it’s in Scotland waiting to be loaded with whisky. I love the idea of using a container to explore the world.
The second project is from the BBC World Service Trust, a charitable organisation that uses “a variety of approaches including television and radio drama and advertisements to raise awareness and promote change in behaviour on health, governance, human rights, the environment and other development issues.”
They had the challenge of making condoms more acceptable in India, a difficult task. They decided to use ringtones, creating one that says ‘condom’ as a way to get people talking about the subject, with the ringtone available via SMS, via a voice system or from the website condomcondom.org. (no link as I’m currently getting it reported as containing malware). It’s a pretty successful mobile campaign:
* We’ve had over 270,000 requests for downloading the ringtone in India through our SMS shortcode. This does not include the number of people who have obtained the ringtone via Bluetooth and our website.
* The campaign website condomcondom.org has received over 2m hits. We get over 65,000 hits a day.
* We’ve collected hundreds of news stories from all over the world that have covered the campaign. It’s appeared on the front page of the Times Of India as well as international media. International sources covering it range from NPR and The Economist to the very random – I was recently interviewed by a radio station in Bogota Colombia!
* The Indian government has adopted our campaign and is airing our TV and radio adverts at its own expense as part of its National AIDS Control effort.
Not bad at all for a public health message, using a novel approach in a country where 25% of the population have a phone.
