BT unveils the first national advertising campaign designed to position BT Vision as Britain’s most flexible digital TV service

The multi-million pound campaign – BT’s biggest of the year so far – is led by national TV advertising, kickstarted by two new 60 second slots starring Kris Marshall and Esther Hall. The new ads develop the story of Adam and his partner Jane as they each rush home from work, anticipating their ideal night of TV via BT Vision – be it through Freeview, BT Vision’s broad choice of on demand content, or a programme stored on the PVR. The ads will make their debut during ITV’s ‘Grease Is The Word’ on Saturday May 12.

The TV slots are supported by a nationwide BT Vision poster campaign across billboards and bus sides, including a specially created execution for the Clapham Colossus at Clapham Junction – at 200ft, the largest backlit poster site in Europe.

The above the line campaign incorporates advertisements in national print newspapers and magazines. BT has also substantially revamped the website at www.bt.com/btvision and will be driving a major online campaign including rich media ads featuring on the home pages of MSN, Yahoo! and AOL.

“This campaign seeks to establish BT Vision, and build a strategic positioning in an increasingly competitive market, drawing on the striking visual identity and generating long-term awareness amongst consumers of BT Vision as ‘entertainment that’s right for me’.”

The BT Vision campaign is led by AMV BBDO, who are responsible for all above the line advertising activity.

BT Vision is enabled by the innovative V-box, an HD-ready television set-top box which connects to BT Broadband where a customer has a minimum guaranteed line speed of 2mb per second, and offers not only thousands of hours of on-demand content and the Freeview channels, but also a personal video recorder (PVR) which can record up to 80 hours of programming. BT is making the V-box – worth £199 - free to BT Broadband customers and, unlike its main competitors, is also not charging extra each month for the DVR function. The box is installed by a BT engineer, with an installation fee of £60 and a connection charge of £30. BT will introduce a self-install version of BT Vision later this year.

Unlike existing satellite and cable services, BT Vision does not require a mandatory subscription or minimum monthly payment. Payment terms for on-demand programming are completely flexible. Customers can either pay-per-view or subscribe to programming blocks as they wish with entertainment to suit every taste. There are current and library movies, music videos, concerts, kids’ programmes, recent and classic television including drama, comedy, documentaries and other genres. The huge selection of current movies are all available on a pay per view basis with the latest blockbuster titles at lower prices than are offered by satellite, cable and high street video chains (see comparison chart attached). There is also a “catch-up TV” service allowing customers to catch-up with selected programming from the some of the previous week’s broadcast schedule that they missed and did not pre-record. BT Vision Sports will also be launched later in the summer offering its subscribers access to a huge selection of Premiership and other on-demand sports as well as live FA Premiership and Scottish Premier League football action from the Setanta Sports channel.

BT Vision offers customers a better deal. Research has shown that millions of customers are dissatisfied with the choice or value for money they get from existing TV services. Over 40 per cent of existing Freeview customers have suggested they would like more channels but do not want to pay a compulsory subscription while 70 per cent of dissatisfied satellite and cable customers believe their current TV platform is too expensive. BT Vision is designed for customers who want more choice than Freeview but who don’t want to pay a compulsory subscription. BT is aiming to attract hundreds of thousands of customers by the end of the year and 2-3 million customers in the medium term.