In 1983 Time's newly created Teletext division planned to roll out an interactive cabletext "interactive magazine" service to the home, to be delivered via cable TV channel.

Challenges

Time Teletext partnered with six major agencies to produce direct marketing for the new medium. BBDO selected The Communication Studio to create the interactive online advertising campaigns for flagship clients Pillsbury and Dodge.

Solutions

We produced whimsical "attractor" insertion ads in an online electronic magazine section for each client. These would in turn point to a standalone advertising sub-site that contained full-page animated advertising. The challenge was to create appropriate online campaigns for two very different products: Baking Goods and Automobiles.

Pillsbury

This "cookbook" database was a series of illustrated recipes (2-3 screens apiece) which were updated on a regular basis.

Dodge

This car manufacturer wished to present a whole brochure (a separate 50 page site) of in-depth information about their featured autos. So we created a "game" environment which got visitors to collect clues - which would entitle them to a prize that they could collect at a local Dodge dealership. We also localized the advertising message with information and links to the local Dodge dealerships.

Wireframes, DemoSite

Cabletext was an early effort to leverage the settop "cable box" as a way of delivering mildly interactive digital services to the home. The entire 50,000 page digital "magazine" was pushed out onto a blank cable TV channel (it cycled through in about 6 seconds).

You selected pages from a series of menus; When the page you'd selected cycled past, the settop cable box would capture and display it. Navigation was simple and limited to numbers that you could enter via the cable remote control pad.

The service offered "information retrieval" rather than true "transaction", but it was a step in the right direction.

Advertising Mini-sites and Banner / Insert Ads, Matsushita cable box with videotex graphics chip, NAPLPS vector graphics, sub-sites, banner and insertion ads