The Message
GE
Issue 38 | March 2016
Agency
BBDO New York
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer, BBDO Worldwide David Lubars Chief Creative Officer, BBDO New York Greg Hahn Executive Creative Director Michael Aimette Creative Director Tim Roan Creative Director Levi Slavin Junior Art Director Rachel Moore Junior Copywriter Darina Khafizova
Production Team
Associate Director, Interactive Production Joe Croson Interactive Produer Eric Bloom Writer Mac Rogers Director Rachel Wolther @ Panoply Media Executive Producer Andy Bowers @ Panoply Media Producer Sarah Lilley @ Panoply Media
Other Credits
Account Team Brandon Fowler Anna Mills Marissa Amendolia Senior Engagement Planner Rhys Hillman Sound Designer Brendan Baker
Date
October 2015
Background
GE wanted to talk about their new medical technology that used acoustic sound waves to heal the human body. GE also wanted breakthrough media solutions. Sound waves? Breakthrough?! Technology?!!
Idea
The answer was a podcast called 'The Message', a weekly sci-fi story that extended over eight episodes, about a young woman who got to sit in with a top team of cryptologists trying to decipher a message received 70 years ago from outer space. Oh, and listening to the sound waves of The Message will kill you. In addition to the podcast episodes, the team also created a complex online presence/back story for all the people and places; as well as a riddle hidden in the Soundcloud postings that unlocked a secret message from the greatest cryptographer in all the land.
Results
The Message was downloaded more than 3 million times and became the #1 podcast on iTunes.
Our Thoughts
'Serial' was one of the media sensations of last year, a podcast about true crime that gave new life to podcasting in general when it was downloaded 75 million times. Clever BBDO to tap into the zeitgeist with a 'serial' of their own, hosted by the GE Podcast Theatre. This was itself a homage to the old GE Theatre of the 1950s hosted by some actor called Ronald Reagan.
The story itself behaves like nonfiction, a story about a fake popular science series called 'Cyphercast', in which the cryptographers investigate mysterious transmissions from deep space.
Podcasting is only going to get bigger. It's now easy to download and listen to on your smartphone when you're on the move, not to mention in your car. And top storytellers have begun to play with it.
Clever clever BBDO for being wise to this media opportunity as well and taking the oldest broadcast medium of them all (radio) and modernising it, making GE seem a switched on brand along the way.