We proposed a world first, in an interactive vote campaign where kids could decide the conclusion of the episodic advertising campaign: Dr X was left hanging over the very death-ray he planned to use to destroy the Earth. Action Man fans were then asked to vote across multiple channels: should Action Man save Dr X? Two endings were created, one of which would never be played out. The second stage was to reveal the outcome of the vote! Here we used a 60” ‘roadblock’ across every single kids commercial channel at 7:30am on Saturday 15th November (the key time for kids viewing in the UK). Hasbro’s PR agency also helped us gain valuable press in the TV listings, to make this reveal ad a real ‘appointment to view’.

In terms of results the response from kids was massive – we polled over 103,000 votes. Compare this with the year-long Big Read event on the BBC, where The Lord of The Rings won with 174,000 votes; Action Man would have come fourth! Most importantly Action Man did regain the position of No. 1 action figure, in the all-important run up to Christmas!