Marketing Life on Mars

*Photos of the bus shelter posters of Life on Mars "nick of time" campaign uploaded by Flickr users.

I loved Life on Mars season 1, being of a certain age, a fan of the Sweeney and (briefly) the owner of a Ford Cortina about 10 years ago. (It cost me a fortune in spares and I paid some bloke to tow it away when it died on Newington Green.)
And its back for the 2nd series on BBC1/4 next Tuesday night at 9pm. Leading up to Feb 13 has been a slick marketing campaign that, for once, plays to the strengths of the show and has some knowing nods to the fans of what is actually a mainstream cop show. (An avge of 7m viewers last time round). That attention to detail in using the "BBC1 in colour" (from the BBC's trails of 1973) straplines hasn't been lost on the v.hard to please idents crowd , the excellently done Camberwick Green/"kicking in a nonce" retro taster (its recycled from one of those dream sequences) went down so well with one of the BBC points of view mboarders (and they really are a tough crowd) that he was forced to admit

for the first time ever an advert has encouraged me to watch a programme.

There was even this spoof 1973 police training manual penned by DCI Gene Hunt, which I er, saw lurking on the Bizarre pages of the Sun Online next to a story about Ashley and Cheryl (I was looking for more Vickywatch type howlers. honest guv).

The campaign has been put together by Red Bee Media . (all credits are on this Brand Republic post).

But ok its hardly Snakes on a Plane yet complementing the junctions between between EastEnders and Holby we've had a small campaign of users taking photos of posters at bus shelters and sharing them with Flickr, extensive edit wars/updates in anticipation of series 2 at Wikipedia, fans explaining the ads over at the Digital Spy forums and Points of View and naturally much blogging
and embedding . A week away and I'd say its all sorted. Gene Hunt on Twitter might have been nice though.

(Actually the best bit of marketing for the new series is the terrific tribute 1973 Radio Times cover in this weeks edition.. Buggered if I can find a pic of it online though. )