Yesterday, I had very interesting talk with Adam Gee, award-winning interactive media producer and New Media Commissioner for Channel 4 Television.
The videos that Adam commissioned such as the Testicular Self-Checking Guide received 100,000 views in the two hours after the broadcast of C4’s Embarrassing Bodies series. Doing further research The Guardian reported how the series “…is triggering some of the highest ever web and mobile download numbers for the broadcaster, we are told, recording 1.2m page views on the show’s site in the first 36 hours.”
Getting important public service messages into the mainstream is not easy and this is a very successful example. It reminds me of Doctor Foster’s FIT magazine, which I have always admired as a good example of how popular media formats can be deftly altered to provide entertaining public service information. I wonder if we will see more examples of this communication format emerge in other public service areas?