• by Wayne Friedman , February 11, 2008

NBC will launch a rare network brand campaign around the Summer Olympics in Beijing.

"We are aggressively working on a brand campaign," said Jim Vescera, executive vice president of on-air advertising at NBC. "It's going to take a while to formulate it." NBC will use the big TV sports programming platform of the Summer Olympics in Beijing, which runs August 8-24, to get that message out.

Vescera could not be specific about the exact content of the campaign, but noted, "we want to embrace the brand we have. We were more comedy-centric; now we are more drama-centric." He did say the campaign "will be a bit of fun" and will include aspects of "viewer engagement."

The Summer Olympics will not only be used to launch NBC's new programming, since the fall season will start some weeks later. Given the strike, NBC executives have said it isn't only about launching programming in the fall, but year-round.

Vescera noted that broadcast networks are taking a page from cable networks' marketing plans. "Certainly, the cable networks have been more brand-centric," he notes.

At the TV critics tour last summer, incoming NBC Entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman expressed support for a NBC brand marketing campaign.

Brand TV campaigns are typically rare among broadcast networks in recent years. The last major one came from ABC's "TV is Good" campaign in the late 1990s, where the so-called yellow campaign made fun of the process of viewing TV. Although ABC got much publicity, the network struggled during those years, coming in near the bottom of the prime-time ratings race.

NBC's ongoing in-season promo efforts will also include plenty of viewer engagement. Last year, for example, NBC allowed viewers of "The Office" to produce their own promos for the network. "It is another way of giving the viewers a voice on the networks," says Vescera.