About five years ago the four Australian free to air commercial networks – 7,9,10 and SBS all added digital channels, vastly increasing the amount of advertiser supported programming available to consumers. There are now sixteen free to air channels in a market of 21 million people. NETFLIX launched in Australia on March 24, 2015.

The Free-To-Air networks in Australia consider a show "a hit" if it pulls over a million viewers an hour, on cable a hit is 100,000 viewers.

Year-on-year viewership for FTA television has dropped 6% in the last year, as marketers and viewers move to video-on-demand, youtube and streaming digital entertainment.

With a few notable exceptions, most of the Branded Entertainment to date in Australia has been web based content or product placement – not entertainment developed around a brand strategy. Our challenge was to harness the huge reach of free to air television and improve on that using the deep engagement of the web. Australians have always been early technology adopters. The fractured media landscape and the challenges of pitching brand-funded shows to the networks has pushed advertisers to the internet as a viable cost per eyeball way to measure return on investment for branded entertainment

Social media, Skype and Facetime have made real-time connecting much easier with further technology breakthroughs happening at a rapid pace.

We use this trend to generate buzz about a fictional next generation communication technology breakthrough – holographic video calling technology.

Currently holograms are the stuff of science fiction with no real world version anywhere close to launching. But with technology moving at such breakneck speed we believed people would accept the launch of such an idea if it came in association with one of the world’s biggest brands like Jack Daniel’s. There was also an increasing trend in advertising, of brands using technology ‘firsts’ to create engagement and cut through.

As the campaign only broke a month ago (at the time of writing) results are only provisional at this stage, but it is already being hailed as highly successful.

To date the campaign has received 341,768 video views on Youtube and Facebook – on a media spend of just $80,000 (Australian). This already makes it

the most successful video campaign Jack Daniel’s Australia has ever had, with the campaign also achieving a greater level of engagement (through shares) than any other piece of content they have ever released. The campaign also achieved worldwide media attention attracting $396,000 in earned media so far)

Technology is amazing but as far as Jack’s are concerned, people are better every time.