AOL had a two-fold challenge. First,
they wanted to drive traffic to their
site via ‘listicles’, (top-ten lists that
summarized the past year in fashion,
food, pop culture and so on.) Second,
people tended to view them as stuffy,
not savvy and a bit obsolete.
Our solution was to create (or highlight)
the stories behind the content, so each
execution tells you something you didn’t
know, and gets you excited about the
rest. Because of the vast number of
lists, our campaign was quite large:
3 films, 4 radio executions and dozens
of banners.
Success was measured not only in
click-throughs, but also in forum posts,
which consistently mentioned how
impressed users were that AOL was
doing something entertaining.
