B2B/B2C Case Study:

Interactive TV Advertising

Interactive & Emerging Media Advertising
with B2B reporting for American Express

BrightLine | American Express | DirecTV | AT&T U-Verse | Cablevision

My Contributions:

Creative Direction & Strategy Development
Project Management
UX/UI Design
Graphic Design
Video Storyboarding
Post-Campaign Analysis
Quality Assurance

The Team:

President
2 Senior Managers
3 Project Leads
5 Experience Designers
3 Video Editors
2 Reporting and Data Analysts

Tools:

Adobe Creative Suite
Slack
Atlassian Jira

Background

BrightLine was the first company to pioneer interactive television solutions for brands. Today, BrightLine offers the industry’s most powerful Advanced TV technology suite, providing marketers with a plug-and-play solution to leverage the full range of Over-The-Top (OTT), connected TV, and Smart TV advertising opportunities.

One of its major clients was American Express, which sought to enhance its 30-second ad buys on cable TV providers such as DirecTV, AT&T, Cablevision, and more. To achieve this, they partnered with BrightLine to make the ads interactive, taking viewers to a dedicated channel to watch long-form video content, play games, and learn more about the latest cards and activations that Amex was offering.

“Between 2012 and 2016, our team created more than 25 interactive television campaigns for Amex.”

Each campaign involved producing a short video that reimagined the brand’s 30-second TV commercial. The short videos aimed to grab viewers’ attention and direct them to the channel where they could engage further with the brand’s content. This content would include long-form videos and interactive features like galleries and trivia games. Once there, the content needed to be interactive enough to keep the bounce rates low.

The Approach

I joined the “Amex team” at Brightline from the very beginning. Between 2012 and 2016, our team created more than 25 interactive television campaigns for Amex. Amex aimed to establish itself as a lifestyle brand, so many of the ads focused on promoting the brand’s current activities, such as music festivals, partnerships with Travel+Leisure and the NBA, the Tribeca Film Festival, and more.

My responsibilities included UX design, graphic design, quality assurance (QA), and storyboarding in collaboration with our video production team. We had to adhere to the brand and their partner’s guidelines and work within the capabilities of each publisher’s platform.

Challenges

In all our campaigns, we encountered specific challenges. Some campaigns had limited content, so our team had to be creative and resourceful in finding solutions.

Our quality assurance (QA) had to be impeccable–which often required us to review video content multiple times, even if it was as long as forty-five minutes, to ensure no mistakes. We also had to read through credit card terms and conditions carefully.

Additionally, what worked for DirecTV might not work for another publisher like Cablevision, so each campaign required 2-4 versions of the same experience—meaning that all design and QA work had to be quadrupled.

Results

Brightline’s Amex team collaborates with the research and data department to create a campaign wrap-up report after each campaign. Our team consistently achieved strong metrics regarding visits, click-through rate (CTR), and engagement for every campaign.

Amex continued to renew its campaigns for several years, establishing itself as one of Brightline’s most high-profile and long-lasting clients in its portfolio.