Watch out sunsets and aquariums. You’re not the only things hypnotic enough to get your own dedicated TV channels. Rotating rotisserie chickens are about to get their time in the limelight thanks to a new multimedia campaign for Cara Foods’ Swiss Chalet banner.
On Feb. 28, The Rotisserie Channel will launch on channel 208 on Rogers digital cable. Running until May 22 (or longer, depending on how well Swiss Chalet feels it’s received), the channel will air 24/7 video footage of rotisserie chicken.
The idea was hatched from a BBDO Toronto-created TV spot for the campaign. The ad is currently on the air and includes a Swiss Chalet employee who talks about how cool it would be to have a rotisserie TV channel.
Through collaborations with Rogers’ cable advertising sales teams and media agency MEC Canada, the channel is about to become reality. It will feature promo codes for Swiss Chalet discounts that will regularly run along the bottom of the screen, then disappear. The codes will direct viewers to Swiss Chalet’s Facebook page (which currently has more than 70,000 fans), where they can enter the promo code to receive a printable coupon.
There will be a new deal every day to keep people engaged, said MEC communications strategy director Deborah Aldridge.
Swiss Chalet is announcing the channel to its Facebook fans and e-mail database today. And Rogers’ digital subscribers will be able to access it through the Quick Start Menu ad banner that appears when they turn on their TV. Plus, the TV spot with the Swiss Chalet employee who dreams about a rotisserie channel will be updated next week for viewers in Ontario with a tag at the end that references the Rotisserie Channel. It will run until May 1, said Jenny Croswell, broadcast supervisor at MEC.
Croswell said MEC will consider the Rotisserie Channel successful if it can pull in similar viewership numbers to Rogers’ Aquarium Channel. Rogers currently monitors its “esthetic channels” (i.e. Sunset, Fireplace and Aquarium) on a monthly basis and in January, 166,950 set-top boxes tuned into the Aquarium Channel for an average of 11 minutes per viewing session.
“With the launch of Rotisserie Channel, we’re hoping Rogers can give us daily numbers so we can see if there are specific days of the week where viewership is higher, and then hopefully tailor the promo offers to those days of the week,” said Croswell.
Aldridge said the campaign is an interesting way of tying a commercial to an actual reality. “[The concept of a rotisserie TV channel] is talked about in the commercial and you think ‘Oh yeah, whatever,’ but we’ve actually made it happen,” she said. “And then by tying it into the Facebook page and tying in promo offers, it becomes measurable.” She added that Swiss Chalet will be able to track exactly how many people respond to the offers and pick up any of the chat about it on the Facebook page.
