Tom Davidson, MD for A+E Networks UK, said: "We are delighted to be honoured at CTAM Europe. Given the growing importance and influence of social media, it's never been more important for broadcasters to embrace this medium to build our channel brands and engage audiences. This award really celebrates our commitment to communicating that HISTORY is a very exciting, fresh and modern brand."
The campaign was developed for the UK market in February 2011 with the key objective to reach a wider target audience, and engage with users and viewers in a new and different environment. A six-month partnership with location-based network Foursquare for the city of London encouraged the target audience to explore the local history around them in an entertaining, engaging and interesting way.
The Foursquare collaboration involved the creation of a brand new, limited edition HISTORY London badge, the first badge ever to be available exclusively in the UK. This could be unlocked by a user checking-in four times to any of over 600 locations across the city. A quirky and interesting historical tip was also uploaded for each of the 600 locations, with each thoroughly researched to be unique and intriguing, rather than the well-known information people receive when visiting a historic place of interest.
The campaign has proven to be successful to date, with nearly 20,000 badges being unlocked, meaning that fans have checked into the HISTORY tips over 80,000 times. The HISTORY Foursquare following now stands at nearly 250,000 with over 100,000 new followers joining the page since the campaign began. At the press launch there were approximately 550 tweets and over 1200 views of the short video created for YouTube. The @HISTORYUK Twitter followers doubled inside a week of the launch.
HISTORY first launched in the UK in November 1, 1995 and it is currently available in over 300 million TV households, in over 150 countries, in more than 30 languages worldwide.
