Tara Ward appears to be like again on the unusual TV phenomenon that was Tellydots.
It was October 2000. The brand new millennium had dawned, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring mania was about to grip New Zealand and Anastacia’s ‘I’m Outta Love’ was the largest tune of the yr. It was additionally the time when a weird TV3 advertising marketing campaign took maintain of the nation, and a few tiny dots took over our tv screens. This was the period of the Tellydot, somewhat piece of sticky cardboard that promised a nation nice, nice issues.
You may not keep in mind Tellydots, however devoted TV fan Wayne Lewis does. Wayne has some imprecise however unshakeable Tellydot recollections which have haunted him for the previous twenty years, and none of them make sense. “I feel I keep in mind KFC giving them away with meals,” he recollects. “You’d peel the sticker off when the correct present got here on, and stick it to some a part of the telly. On the finish of the present you’d take away it, and I feel it revealed whether or not or not you gained a prize.”
Trying again, Wayne is baffled by the entire thing. “I don’t know even now how that might have labored.”
TV3’s ground-breaking Tellydots marketing campaign ran for 4 weeks in late 2000, with the intention of accelerating TV scores by attractive folks to observe a choice of TV3 exhibits. Each week, loyal viewers might win a stunning array of prizes, together with two Holden Barina automobiles, a household vacation to Membership Med in Malaysia and – look ahead to it – one in every of 20 moveable CD gamers. The grand prize was a whopping $333,333 (all of the three’s for TV3), and all you needed to do to win was stick a magical dot in your tv display screen.
5 million Tellydots had been imported from Germany for the marketing campaign, which meant that by late 2000, New Zealand had extra Tellydots than folks.
Every Tellydot was the scale of a 50 cent coin, and viewers might gather one with each buy from KFC, Pizza Hut and BP. Then, each time a particular brand popped up throughout sure TV3 primetime exhibits like Third Rock from the Solar, Starship Troopers and Dwelling Enchancment, viewers needed to peel the backing off a brand new Tellydot and place it over the brand for an opportunity to win a prize.
Within the phrases of Tim “The Instrument Man” Taylor: “Aaaeurgh?” How does chucking a bit of cardboard onto a bit of glass win you a global vacation? The science appears shady now, however on the time, Tellydots had been promoted as a brand new piece of expertise that allowed entrepreneurs to see what exhibits and advertisements we had been watching, and the way lengthy we had been watching them for.
This secret info was supposedly captured by a bit of photosensitive movie hidden contained in the Tellydot, which might react to sure patterns of sunshine and slowly “cost up” because the programme screened. Viewers had been instructed to not change the channel or – heaven forbid – take away the dot whereas the present was operating, or the Tellydot would turn out to be “void”. As soon as the present was over and the Tellydot had been “activated”, you merely returned it to the place of buy and waited for somebody to name your landline with the life-changing information that you just had been $333,333 richer.
As unusual as this marketing campaign sounds right now, New Zealand wasn’t the one place the place dot expertise took over the telly. This small stick-on gadget was patented by German entrepreneur for a Dutch firm in 1999 and launched to Hungary and Portugal in early 2000, the place it had a constructive impression on TV scores. It then grew to become a worldwide advertising phenomenon, with Australia’s “Undertake a Dot” operating similtaneously the TV3 marketing campaign, as Channel7 tried to carry onto report viewing numbers from the Sydney Olympics.
However whereas trustworthy viewers like Wayne had been dutifully sticking their dots on the telly, different New Zealanders had been extra sceptical. A NZ Herald TV evaluation known as it an “terribly irritating promotion”, whereas pioneering members of an early Google group puzzled “what kind of particular person watches teledot programmes?” Some crafty viewers tried to beat the system by sticking the dot on the TV display screen, muting the sound and easily strolling away, whereas others fell deep into the Tellydots rabbit gap and questioned if this was a authorities plot to ship secret alerts by means of the tv.
As bonkers because it was, Tellydots was considered as successful. It’s unclear what particular info (if any) TV3 gleaned from the dots, however an AdMedia information article from November 2000 quotes the CEO of the Tellydots promotion firm as saying 10% of Tellydots had been anticipated to be returned. This was “a wonderful outcome” given TV3’s market share, whereas TV3 reported an “quick” enhance in scores within the 18-49 goal age group.
In 2023, the place every little thing we watch on a display screen is monitored and analysed and the algorithm is God, Tellydots belong to a time so harmless that it’s a surprise it even occurred in any respect. The TV dot died out in 2003 (final seen in Poland), and sadly, we by no means Tellydotted in Aotearoa once more. “I’ve been looking for info on this for years… sadly it feels prefer it’s been wiped from existence (and everybody’s unconscious for that matter),” one Tellydot fan lamented on-line.
In hindsight, Tellydots had been in the end nothing greater than a intelligent advertising gimmick. However for many who keep in mind, their temporary second on our screens symbolises the optimism of the early 2000s, when the pull of successful a conveyable CD participant was stronger than logic or cause. “This was a load of shit, wasn’t it?” one Australian Reddit consumer not too long ago puzzled, as the sunshine of time imprinted a brand new actuality on their very own photosensitive reminiscence. “I feel I pulled it aside and it was simply layers of cardboard.”
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