Forget about traditional advertising, product placement, or branded entertainment. In the U.K., car maker Audi is rewriting all the rules with its very own television channel. The 24-hour channel
features programming such as quiz shows, celebrity interviews, and travelogues, all with a common thread that reliably leads back to the automakers brands. For example, one show features a Champagne
tour of the French countryside, where the open road leads to a black-tie dinner at the Mumm cellars, near Reims. Guess what kind of cars the glamorously dressed guests arrive in and park outside the
dining room? The show was created by Audi and its global ad agency, BBH, over two years in a closely watched experiment to divert marketing money from traditional 30-second television spots, which
ad-skipping customers can ignore with devices like TiVo. "This has been kind of a long journey," said Mark Boyd, director of content for BBH in London. "It's really challenging and very different from
how advertising usually works. In mainstream advertising, we create a low volume of output--30-second bands--with high production budgets. In this new year, we operate differently. What we're creating
are high amounts of output with low budgets, low control."
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