London-based Mantra PR and its San Francisco partner agency Consort have been handed an international brief to position the website as ‘socially conscious’.
The site is positioning itself as ‘the online equivalent of a high-brow glossy magazine such as Vanity Fair’, according to CEO Charlie Muirhead.
Whereas Joost and its rivals stream music videos and film previews, t5m will show exclusive content from celebrity endorsers including actors Kate Bosworth and Ray Winstone and singer James Blunt.
The channel has partnered with Nelson Mandela’s 46664 Aids campaign, and includes an interview with Mandela. It produces its videos in-house so it can claim higher production values than some of its competitors.
The site has brought in well-known journalists such as Vogue’s Jo Craven and US Glamour’s Rachel Zalis to produce its video segments.
The account teams at Mantra and Consort will run a full consumer, B2B, trade and online campaign as t5m prepares to go live in mid-2008.
While the consumer press will account for about 80 per cent of the agencies’ efforts, the teams at Mantra and Consort will also target media and tech trade titles as well as potential investors.
Mantra’s digital offshoot Spider will run campaigns across social networks, fan sites and the blogosphere, seeding video content to drive web users to the site. The agencies have been retained to promote the website while it is still being tested in preparation for the launch.
The channel secured funding for its launch from lastminute.com co-founder and internet entrepreneur Brent Hoberman. Other high-profile investors include John Taysom, the founder of the Reuters Greenhouse Fund, and Mexx clothing chain founder Rattan Chadha.
