Against a background of unprecedented cuts to marketing budgets in 2009, OMD UK pinpointed the beneficial effects of setting up a collaborative partnership between two of its clients - Waterstone's and Film4. The opportunity for Film4 lay in the fact that while Waterstone's core customers are keen film fans, and feel positively towards the Channel 4 family of channels, they weren't actually watching much Film4. Waterstone's could benefit from the fact that Film4 viewers are book enthusiasts - 48 per cent are likely to have visited a bookstore in any three-month period.

To collaborate the two brands and target a very similar audience simultaneously.

a campaign comprised a season of 34 films of book adaptations shown on Film4, along with a six-week promotion of book adaptations in Waterstone's. The season launched with a seminar event (which received significant media coverage) at Waterstone's flagship store in Piccadilly, exploring the characteristics of a great adaptation. Waterstone's was able to promote a back catalogue of adapted books and talk to customers about something other than price. Film4 was able to take its brand beyond TV and on to the high street

Over the month of the "Great Adaptations" campaign, viewing of Film4 was up 10 per cent for individuals and 8 per cent for 16- to 34-year-olds, compared with the same period in 2008. Traffic to the Film4 website grew by 25 per cent, with competition section traffic up 200 per cent. There were 58,626 entries received for the "Great Adaptations" competition, compared with an average of 7,000 entries for other competitions.

With Waterstone's high-street footprint of more than 300 stores nationwide, Film4 was able to benefit from visibility in windows and in-store, reaching several hundreds of thousands of people going through Waterstone's doors each week. Most significantly, though the high street was battling against a recessionary market, with overall footfall down by 3.4 per cent over the period, Waterstone's actually saw an increase of 1.4 per cent, translating to an extra 26,000 customers walking through the doors throughout the campaign.