The Jane Austen Season

The challenge

ITV1 wanted to bring storytelling to life with a high quality Jane Austen season on Sunday night - this was an epic season of Jane Austen with three new adaptations.

The big problem was firstly, how do we bring 21st Century storytelling to life and secondly whilst targeting “plugged-in achievers”.  This target audience are confident independent thinkers with plenty of get up and go.

ITV also wanted:

• To bring in more aspirational audiences to ITV1
• To utilise programme communications to shift perceptions of the ITV1 brand
• To create excitement about a new season of quality drama on ITV1

All of these had to be achieved while ensuring these key behaviour values were maintained: uplifting, spirited, witty, romantic, elegant, classic and a modern twist.

The solution

We utilised Classic FM to excite and prompt potential viewers to view throughout the Jane Austen season over March. And what started off as an online brief, became a cross-media proposal, which included online elements, podcasting, audio books and on-air advertorials:

• advertorials on-air voiced by Rupert Penry-Jones
• website activity which pushed listeners online to download the audio books and podcasts
• podcasts produced in-house by the Creation Team consisting of 3 podcasts for each drama
• audio books of each drama

The audio books and podcasts were hosted on Classic FM, ITV’s website and on iTunes. The activity was promoted via the Classic FM home page and then hosted on a page within the site which allowed users to download them.

Other media was used to drive traffic to these areas.

The result

The Jane Austen Series of audio books climbed to number 16 in the iTunes TV & Film Chart.

The podcasts and audio books achieved the most number of downloads we as a company have ever achieved for any media campaigns even beating our own branded podcasts. Over a 1 month period, we achieved over 50,000 downloads.