Cartoon perfects the art of the tease

For kids marketers, one downside to coming off a successful promotion is trying to surpass the high watermark that you set the previous year. That was the challenge confronting Cartoon Network last fall as it prepared to map out the components for Toonami: Lockdown, the follow-up to its first Total Immersion event, Toonami: Intruder. The first promo, an integrated on-line and on-air campaign, had just closed to great fanfare. Hoping to goose its web and TV audience share during the critical back-to-school period, Cartoon had timed the launch of Intruder to coincide with the September 2000 debut of new episodes for the shows that air during its popular Toonami block. For the promotion, Cartoon produced on-air interstitial programming, as well as on-air and on-line spots, encouraging kids to visit the website to play an on-line game and enter a contest to win a variety of prizes.