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BT to spend £33m advertising broadband
Not only can much of Britain not get broadband, but now you have to watch adverts reminding you how good it would be if you could...

By Will Sturgeon

Published: Thursday 19 September 2002

BT has announced a massive marketing drive to promote its broadband services in the UK.

A £10m TV advertising campaign will run from 22 September to 2 October - followed by a £23m marketing campaign in early October - aimed at increasing the number of users signing up for high-speed internet access.

Pierre Danon, CEO of BT Retail, said: "BT's intensive TV campaign is further evidence that broadband is clearly at the top of our agenda. The sheer scale of what we are doing should leave no one in any doubt of the seriousness of our intent to put broadband at the heart of BT and be the flag-bearer for the industry in the government's drive to make Broadband Britain a reality."

A spokesman for BT said the adverts "will be very dramatic movie-like TV adverts, which will run almost incessantly for 10 days" at a cost to the company of £1m per day.

The storyline for the adverts revolves around BT's broadband pipe breaking and all the content escaping. "A BT engineer has to go round capturing all the characters that have escaped," said the spokesman. "There are animated characters from Aardman Animations, pop-singer Jarvis Cocker and even gaming characters fighting in Victoria Station".