HBO Voyeur – Advertising with the lights on
Brand: HBO (Time Warner)
Execution: Web Video Environment
Target: Web Influentials
Rating: ****
Reviewer: David Vinjamuri
Description:
This deceptively simple montage reveals a complex series of interconnected plots. The website shows an apartment building. Any of the apartments can be clicked on to reveal what’s going on inside. The viewer can also zoom in or move forward in time. As the viewer becomes more familiar with the environment it becomes clear that there are other buildings in the city that can be located and clicked on. The plots are by turns odd, creepy (a ghost floats through the building at one point, a mortician photographs the dead), amusing and unexpected. In addition to the website, Voyeur video can be found on HBO on demand, there is a blog and other ‘artifacts’ are rumored to be around the web.
What Works:
The old maxim in writing is “Show, don’t tell.” Advertising is the living rebuttal of this line of thinking. We are endlessly telling consumers what our products can do and depending on the strength of the brand and persuasiveness of our arguments to do the work. When we demonstrate the products in an ad, we call that ‘showing’ but its really still ‘telling’ since it is a contrived situation.
HBO confronts the problem of maintaining its leadership in cutting-edge television content as the Sopranos goes offline. The post-Sopranos, post-Sex in the City network needs to burnish its reputation as an innovator in order to keep viewers tuning in to new series like “John from Cincinatti” and attract professional talent.
HBO Voyeur is an intriguing way of showing HBO’s ability rather than telling about it. This advertising blog is calling it a ‘Web Video Environment’ simply because we don’t really have a name for what it is. No other advertiser has done anything quite like this.
This is effective advertising for HBO because it is both innovative and well executed. The web environment works seemlessly, and it is easy to get lost inside the web of interconnected plots. The explicit voyeurism of the site points out what we know but don’t say about television itself – it is serial voyeurism. Part of the appeal of all good television drama is seeing inside someone’s life without having them know we’re watching.
What Doesn’t:
The site only runs well with a very high speed connection. Not recommended for hotel-room wi-fi, for instance. We would like to see somewhat deeper plotlines and the ability to tune in dialogue rather than tunes. This site is an exceptionally good way to waste three or four hours – if, say, you’re reviewing it.
Branding Bottom Line:
Reminds us why we love HBO. Now if we could only see the Voyeur version of “The Office” …
July 20th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Right on the money here. They definitely didn't care when they set out about slower connections, but they also wouldn't have been able to do nearly as much if they did worry about it. It is tough, but that is the only drawback. The site sucks you in. So easy to just sit and watch full stories unfold. Pretty brilliant. kudos to the team that developed it as well.