Background

As one of the BBC's most popular programmes, Top Gear needs no introduction. The show has produced several income-generating successful spin-offs for the corporation's commercial company, BBC Worldwide, including DVDs, a monthly magazine and the Top Gear website.

Line have worked with the website and magazine teams since 2005, producing online banner adverts and email promotions for various campaigns. In 2006 we were commissioned to develop 10 interactive Flash games to help drive more traffic to the Top Gear website, particularly repeat visitors, and especially during the quieter summer months when the TV show is off-air.

What we did

The Flash games are based around audience favourite stunts featured in the TV series, and include:

• Lotus versus Apache where you fly a helicopter and try to lock-on and blow up a Lotus Elige driven by Jeremy Clarkson
• Darts with Cars where you use a pneumatic piston to fire old bangers at a bulleye containing a caravan - just like James May and Richard Hammond did in real life

A new game had to be delivered on a very small budget every week for a period of two months. The brief was for “throw away” games which would be played a couple of times each, acting mainly as a draw to the website rather than a complete interest in their own right, hence the reason they are in the “Time to Burn” section of the site.

Results

The games more than fulfilled the objectives, immediately helping the website pass the magic million unique monthly users mark, and they were still generating around 220,000 unique players every month eight months after they were introduced.

Line continue to produce monthly online advertsing campaigns for BBC Top Gear Magazine, some of which can be seen here.