Food Network Canada set the wheels in motion this past week, rolling out their fall Marketing campaign across the country. With an innovative approach, using fresh creative and attention-grabbing media vehicles, the campaign ignites excitement for the return of two popular entertaining series, Great Food Truck Race and Restaurant: Impossible and reinforces Food Network as a top entertainment destination.
“With returning seasons of familiar shows this fall, we’ve developed a new promotional strategy, and are taking some risks with our creative approach in order to break through and present both series in a fresh way,” said Solange Bernard, Director of Brand & Publicity, Lifestyle Channels, Shaw Media. “Both series lent themselves naturally to targeted media choices and unique executions that are sure to catch the attention of a broad audience.”
To renew enthusiasm for the new season of Great Food Truck Race, the campaign plays up the exuberant characters and their adventures while also leveraging the current food truck trend. Wrapping street cars and buses to resemble a food truck is the perfect promotional tool, marrying the show content and creative to build excitement and grab attention. The high energy and high-stakes nature of this competitive series are highlighted through online and on-air, maximizing the use of video to encourage consumers to sample the show. These executions, all with the tagline, ‘revved up and ready to roll’, include a day of launch full You Tube homepage takeover, displaying animated series creative and video promos; display ads and video pre-roll on high-reach sites including AOL.com, MSN.ca and TVGuide, and on-air promos running in cinema, across targeted US cable avails and on Food Network. In addition, Food Network street teams took the Canadian National Exhibition by storm, handing out thousands of Great Food Truck Race branded car air fresheners.
To hype-up season two of Restaurant: Impossible, the campaign takes a unique approach by playing off the ever-popular Mission: Impossible secret agent theme with the tagline ‘Struggling restaurants get rescued before they self destruct.’ Digital Media is at the core of this campaign with unique executions that engage consumers in unexpected ways. A synched online animated ad features a spy-like chicken, in full harness, running stealthily across the top of the screen and lowering itself, dodging laser beams, into an ad box below. The same secret agent chicken creative appears in print ads in newspapers including Toronto Star, Metro, 24 Hours, Calgary Herald and Vancouver Province and on large scale billboards. The recognizable, dramatic, Mission: Impossible theme song is used in on-air promos running across Food Network.
Restaurant: Impossible airs Tuesdays at 9pm ET/PT and Great Food Truck Race airs Thursdays at 10pm ET/PT on Food Network Canada.
Food Network’s fall campaign was developed in house by Shaw Media’s Marketing Team with the exception of on-air promos for Great Food Truck Race which were developed by Food Network US and Buster Design.
