To celebrate the royal coronation, TVNZ’s strategy, creative and production arm Blacksand & Partnerships have combined their talents to create an extraordinary integrated partnership campaign ‘Like A King’, showcasing five local advertisers. StopPress spoke with Blacksand Partnerships CEO Aaron Dawson to find out what went into creating this unique offering.
Recognizing the Coronation of the King as a unique opportunity, the TVNZ Blacksand and Partnerships team set out to captivate viewers by combining content and advertising in a way that commemorated this landmark moment in television history and gave Kiwi companies the chance to be part of the national conversation. .
Accompanied by what is likely to be a once-in-a-lifetime programme, the ‘Like A King’ campaign features iconic Suzanne Paul bringing her sales expertise to bear in a series of witty TV spots, seamlessly blending royal etiquette with Arnotts, Burger King, Flight Center , Liquorland. and Summerset brands.
Liquorland Marketing and Customer Service Manager Angela Hurst says Liquorland was looking for bigger brand awareness opportunities that would stand out.
“Since the Coronation was truly a once-in-a-lifetime (or maybe twice-for-some!) opportunity, we decided to take the leap and get involved with this fun campaign idea. Liquorland is a brand that helps bring your events to life and the ‘Like a King’ campaign has given us and consumers a great reason to celebrate.”
As the commercials aired on TVNZ and TVNZ+, viewers also had the opportunity to watch them back-to-back during the commercial break on Seven Sharp on the Friday before the Coronation, as well as during the Coronation broadcast the following day.
Tapping into the glamorous nature of television, the TVNZBlacksand team wanted to “create moments of glory for our customers”, says Dawson.
Following the success of TVNZ’s first multi-client campaign celebrating 30 years of Shortland Streetthousand birthday, it was simply a matter of finding the next event that would provide the right level of national conversation.
“We’ve been looking at events or television moments that an audience or a nation is preparing for — something important where we know there’s going to be a good platform for the audience.”
The key to this was to reverse the conventional content-driven mindset and consider advertiser-driven content, blurring the lines appropriately to deliver value to both audiences and advertisers.
Dawson says that with “Like A King” it was important to try to meet the needs of all audiences and get the tone right.
“The audience could understand that it’s playful if you use someone with an English background like Suzanne Paul, who has a well-known name and who is used to representing different brands.”
As for the ad creation itself, the team shot all five commercials and two promos back-to-back in one day, enlisting the collaboration of invited Summerset residents, five brand partners and a corgi.
“[Suzanne Paul] was a superstar,” says Dawson. “In order to make this work a cost-effective option for our clients in this market, we had to fit the entire shoot into one day.
“To do this in a day requires professionalism and dedication. Keeping a dog that was very furry meant that she would have a lot of fur in her mouth between takes.
“But I think it’s her experience in the market around commercialization and knowing what she’s getting into.”
Feedback on the campaign has been largely positive, Dawson says, with people telling the team it was an ad they didn’t want to turn off.
“It was just fantastic to hear things like that because we want people to be interested in it and pay attention to it, so the brand got a lot of value from it.”
Blacksands and the Partnerships team are looking for new opportunities to replicate this successful model in the future.
“We have a permanent division looking for proactive opportunities and more to come,” says Dawson.
Check out the campaigns here: https://sales.tvnz.co.nz/advertise/blacksand-partnerships/like-a-king/