hawthorne direct Earns Three Silver AXIEM AWARDS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Fairfield, IA - hawthorne direct, the direct response TV advertising agency, recently earned three silver AXIEM AWARDS for the “Light-N-Strike Lures”, “Road Runner” and “Time Life Sounds of the ‘80s” commercials.

"We are pleased to receive three silver AXIEM AWARDS for our innovation, creativity, technical merit and basic quality of work in the electronic media industry. We are enjoying adding the statues to our collection," said Timothy R. Hawthorne, chairman and executive creative director of hawthorne direct.

Light-N-Strike Lures

“Light-N-Strike Lures” is a unique combination of a product that works, an infomercial that has a high entertainment value, and the best elements of a standard television-fishing program. The fact that the Light-N-Strike lures really work allowed us to take Beau Rials (host) to an actual bass lake and shoot successful "real time" fishing during all of the host or pitch segments. We never talk about the product without fish being caught, and the show also includes features that reveal the product success with Steelhead fishing in the Pacific Northwest and salt water and lake fishing in Florida. This infomercial is not filled with computer graphics and high-end animation, but is loaded with shots of big fish being successfully caught by these unique lures as well as underwater "real shots" of how fish attract to this lure.

The creative approach to this show was to shoot the entire body of the infomercial in a true fishing environment. This allowed the Light-N-Strike lures to be actually catching fish "in real time" throughout the body of the infomercial. We allowed many entire segments to be posted in a way that proved that "real fish" were caught in the time of the take. We reduced the size of the B-roll so that a discerning audience member could see that no edit was placed in the segment to compress time. Many fishing infomercials are comprised largely of testimonials and a pitchperson extolling the virtues of the fishing package. We wanted to create a program that was loaded to the gills with the lures successfully catching fish, and to create an end product with the best elements of a successful infomercial with the entertainment value of a standard television-fishing program.

The Light-N-Strike lures will replace the need for any other type of fishing tackle. They will not only “out-fish” any lure but will compete strike for strike against live bait. The Light-N- Strike lures all re-create the swimming action of live bait, and more importantly contain a proprietary technology that emits random flashing controlled by the movement of the lure in the water. This flashing lure creates a bright, dynamic flash in front of a fish, which sets off a predatory strike. Whether the fish is hungry or not the Light-N-Strike lure causes the fish to attack, creating many more strikes than a standard lure, with harder and more intense strikes.

Road Runner

Road Runner is a high speed, online service that provides lightening-fast access to the Internet as well as to unique broadband content and services. Our objective was to inform the audience about this service provider, which is fun, exciting and easy to use in an entertaining way. This 10-minute infomercial uses the Road Runner animated clips throughout and the actors portraying Internet users of all ages use the slogan “Bird is the word – beep beep!”. Road Runner’s programming and benefits come to life in this infomercial with lively animation and rich visual images. Our marketing objectives were to achieve profitable sales through a direct response TV campaign and to drive retail sales. Target audience: Adults, kids and families who use the Internet.

Time Life Sounds of the ‘80s

The program objective for “Time Life Sounds of the ‘80s” is to evoke nostalgia for this period music, thereby exciting and motivating viewers to purchase the entire “Sounds of the ‘80s” music collection directly over television via infomercial marketing. The collection includes hits from such well-known music artists as ZZ Top, Peter Gabriel, Duran Duran, The Police and more. The top hits from the ‘80s are brought together in one monumental collection.

The AXIEM AWARDS is an international awards program created to honor those producers of the very best in all forms of electronic media. This is the only award representing the entire electronic media industry. The AXIEM AWARD sets the standard of creative communication and production excellence in electronic media by establishing a level playing field for all entries. Each entry is judged solely on its own merits against an absolute standard of excellence established for each medium, market and category.

hawthorne direct is a full-service direct response advertising agency, specializing in creative and production, long and short form media buying, telemarketing/fulfillment management and integrated marketing.

 For more information about hawthorne direct please see www.hawthornedirect.com.