The Challenge

A new album needs serious promotion and the Chemical Brothers latest release was no exception. Push the Button, the fifth studio album from the band in 11 years, was expected to do great things.

TV is a traditional element of any big album launch and with a title like Push the Button, interactive TV was an obvious choice on the media plan.

The TV Solution

Record company Virgin booked a series of 20-second spots on Sky 1, Sky Sports and Channel 4 to promote the album. The ads appeared in shows such as The Simpsons and Soccer am.

For those watching C4 on analogue TV, the mix of graphics and French political propaganda images served only to raise awareness of the new release but for those with digital TV it provided a gateway to a sampling opportunity.

Pressing the red button allowed them to enter a dedicated advertiser area where they could listen to five tracks. It was also possible to sample the album via the Sky Active A-Z listings, which was available 24-hours a day.

The album could be sampled online and the schedule also included underground and specialist press titles, outdoor and radio.

The Results

The results show that the TV interface proved highly attractive. TNS Reach Research found that 1.9m adults saw the ad, 13% of Sky Digital households and 28% of all 16-24s in Sky Digital households.

More than 275,000 adults claimed to have used the interactive sampler, the bulk of them in the target audience of 16-34s. Fifty-three percent of interactors accessed the DAL via the red button and 26% via Sky Active and 20% via both.

Among those who had interacted with the album, 22% said they were likely to buy or had already bought the album, a potential gain of 62,000 sales. Push the Button hit the number one spot in the album charts.

“The results were good. In fact the label didn’t expect it to get to number one.”

Simon Smith, Weapon 7