Seeking another avenue to plug its content, NBC has signed a deal giving it placement on ATM-style machines that allow users to download music to a mobile phone or burn it onto a CD. NBC Universal will use the kiosks from Salt Lake City-based Mediaport to promote its late-night lineup and news offerings, as well as MSNBC content. While the late-night lineup clearly appeals to a younger demo, the tactic may have greater potential with the news programs, which may be an afterthought to that group. NBC's in-house ad agency orchestrated the deal. The network will have access to hundreds--an exact figure was not provided--of so-called Mediaport ATMs at retail locations to display their promo content. The ATMs, or "vending machines," offer some 1 million tracks that can be downloaded to mobile devices or CDs. "The partnership is an ideal way for us to reach digital-savvy 18- to-28-year-olds," said Frank Radice, an executive with the NBC Agency. "Media kiosks have a promising future and present an exciting new channel for us to reach and influence these target groups." Helen Seltzer, CEO of Mediaport Entertainment, said the partnership could also open the door "to making other kinds of entertainment content available for download besides digital music."
Hoping to bring some of the measurability of online advertising to print media, Cygnus Business Media announced Wednesday that it is partnering with ID Media, a member of the Interpublic Group of Cos., to introduce a "cost-per-action" feature for ad sales covering 67 trade publications. Josh Martin, vice president of ID Media and its director of emerging media, says "it's a new kind of buying mechanism modeled after DRTV and online performance-based models, paying very close attention to performance and ROI." Martin believes it's a way to target small-business decision makers with limited financial risk, "since we only pay when a publication performs." According to Martin, advertisers pay out cost-per-action fees over time, as the campaign's performance is continually measured. The partnership has already produced one "cost-per-action" campaign featuring four-color direct response ads for a financial services provider. In that campaign, Martin said direct response was measured through several unique phone numbers "to find out which specific vertical categories work better." Depending on the needs of advertisers, the cost-per-action metric could be based on simple expressions of interest or completion of the sales process. In the future, Martin said measurement could also involve sending consumers to a specific URL. Martin added that the model allows advertisers to combine a number of smaller publications for a large aggregate reach with a single ad buy. As the new service gains traction, Cygnus may also begin offering linked print-and-online buys, including the trade publications' Web sites and email newsletters. Altogether, through 175 media products, Cygnus reaches about 15 million readers annually, many in the manufacturing, technology and building trades. However, only 67 print trade publications are currently involved in the cost-per-action program. In recent years, a number of companies have experimented with ways to make print advertising measurable on a cost-per-action basis. In January 2006, Google began selling print ads in the Chicago Sun-Times, expanding the test phase in July of this year to include 225 newspapers nationally. Participating publishers include E.W. Scripps, Freedom Communications, Hearst Newspapers, GateHouse Media, Gannett, MediaNews Group, The New York Times, The Seattle Times Company, Tribune Publishing and Washington Post.
Ex-CBS news anchor Dan Rather has filed a $70 million lawsuit against the network in New York. The case stems from what became CBS' infamous President Bush story in 2004, which focused on his days in the National Guard during the Vietnam War era. Rather claims his reputation was sullied on two fronts. First, because of the way CBS handled the aftermath of the controversial story and second, that the network violated his contract. The veteran anchor says CBS gave him less air-time on "60 Minutes" after forcing him to step down as anchor of the "CBS Evening News" in March 2005. The suit was filed against the network, its corporate parent Viacom Inc., and three of his former bosses: CBS chief executive Leslie Moonves, Viacom executive chairman, Sumner Redstone; and Andrew Heyward, the former president of CBS News. A CBS spokesman, in press reports, said the Rather lawsuit is without merit. Dan Rather is currently the anchor and managing editor of the weekly "Dan Rather Reports" on HDNet.
Universal McCann, which began a radical makeover two years ago when Nick Brien joined as CEO, has named Patricia Steele global director of communications. The appointment appears to fill a void created when Jeremy Miller quietly stepped down as executive vice president-global marketing director earlier this year to return to a similar position at Omnicom's TBWAChiatDay. Miller had replaced long-time Universal McCann marketing chief Charlotte Hatfield. Steele, who has both media and brand communications credentials, most recently worked for brands such as Atari, Avon and Hachette Filipacchi US. Previously, she served as executive vice president-corporate communications at NBC Universal, and helped position the merger of NBC and Universal. She also oversaw media relations for NBC Universal's Entertainment, News, and Sports divisions, CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo and Telemundo and managed a number of community affairs campaigns and events. Prior to NBC Universal, Patricia was Senior Vice President, Communications for Sony Music Entertainment. Steele will report directly to Brien.
To capitalize on the growth of Sony digital entertainment's marketing and production group, it has teamed with Imageworks--and changed its name to Imageworks Interactive. Emmanuelle Borde, who has led the Sony group for seven years, has been promoted to senior vice president, Imageworks Interactive, which handles Web site, mobile, animation and visual-effects projects. Yair Landau, vice chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment and president of Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment, said aligning his group with Imageworks was a natural fit. "Imageworks Interactive stands to benefit greatly from the experience of Imageworks in infrastructure management, artist development and client services in terms of working successfully with both Sony and non-Sony clients," says Landau. Borde adds that the move "cements our brand outside the studio as a full-service interactive agency." Under Borde's leadership, the marketing and production group has developed thousands of Web sites and digital campaigns for worldwide studio initiatives, including a unified online presence for Sony Pictures Entertainment at SonyPictures.com. Worldwide campaigns include Sony Pictures, the "Spider-Man" movie trilogy, and "Surf's Up," as well as TV shows "Wheel of Fortune," "Jeopardy!" and "The Boondocks."
A day after a top Comcast official indicated the cable operator is feeling some heat from telco TV providers, an AT&T executive said Wednesday that more would be coming. Ralph de la Vega, an AT&T group president who oversees entertainment, said the fledgling AT&T U-verse service offers "lots of revenue opportunities" and could become a $1 billion business. The TV service so far is in only 100,000 homes, but has picked up half of those since June and is growing at a rate that could put it close to 200,000 by year-end, he said. That's a drop in the bucket compared to Comcast's 24 million, but COO Steve Burke said Tuesday that Verizon, the other telco TV provider, is providing significant competition with its FiOS service--and while a challenge from AT&T has apparently caused less "damage" so far, Comcast expects that to heat up as AT&T ramps up its investment. That was a marked change from comments by some top cable executives who before questioned the viability of the fiber-based telco TV services. "Verizon is real," Burke said. "FiOS exists in our footprint; Verizon is taking video customers from us." Verizon's FiOS had 515,000 customers at the end of June and was available to some 3.9 million customers, for a penetration rate of 13%. The telco is looking for up to 4 million customers by 2010, for up to a 25% penetration rate across the markets it serves. Burke and de la Vega made their comments at an investor event in New York. Still, while Verizon is peeling away customers in several markets, Burke said the telco may still suffer from investing too much money too quickly to deploy the service. "We have always questioned, will they get a fair return for their shareholders?" he said. Burke said it's more difficult to gauge what kind of subscriber gains AT&T may be making vis-à-vis Comcast in the large Houston market where they compete head-to-head. But regarding AT&T's potential challenge, he said "they are real--they're a very big company, very serious about what they're doing, spending a lot of money." AT&T has so far produced a considerably slower 2% penetration rate compared to Verizon's 13%. AT&T's 100,000 subscribers come from a 5 million-home footprint, and the company plans to be in 8 million homes by year-end. If that holds and it has 200,000 subs by then, the penetration rate would still be less than 3%. Of course, a major marketing spend could accelerate uptake. AT&T plans to be in 18 million homes by the end of 2008. AT&T's de la Vega said U-verse will yield more revenues as the company reduces its cost structures. For example, he said, it used to take an average of 7.5 hours to install U-verse--which is now down to 6.5 and one technician can do it in 4 hours. He also said the company has made technological improvements, allowing it to reduce the amount of bandwidth it needs to provide HD viewing, bringing costs down. Also, subscriber growth, perhaps to the 1 million range, will give AT&T more leverage via-a-vis content providers and could lead to reduced per-subscriber payments. de la Vega added that he also expects to bring those costs down by approaching programmers and offering them a three-screen distribution deal, where they could offer their video on U-verse as well as reach millions of AT&T broadband and wireless customers. He said he's looking for "innovative content producers" interested in multi-platform reach. As costs come down and consumer interest piques, de la Vega said: "It's going to follow the same trends as broadband." AT&T has some 12 million broadband customers. U-verse installations are taking place at an average rate of 7,000 to 8,000 a week, he said, and the company believes it can get to 10,000 by next year. Separately, de la Vega signaled that AT&T plans to ramp up its ad sales efforts to attract marketers looking to reach its massive customer base in the broadband and wireless areas in bundles. While it doesn't yet sell advertising on U-verse, it has opportunities online and is seeking to ramp up in mobile. "I think there's great upside in advertising, and we've only begun to dive into those markets," he said.
A group of New York taxi drivers sued the city on Wednesday to stop the installation of GPS tracking systems, mandated for every cab by Oct. 1. The cabbies allege that the GPS system, which enables new video screens to serve location-specific ads to passengers, would also allow the Taxi and Limousine Commission to track their movements. According to the lawsuit, the GPS systems would thus also give away cabbies' biggest trade secret--the routes they use when looking for fares. Two weeks ago, a group of cabbies went on strike for two days during Fashion Week to protest the required installations. Cabbies are responsible for getting the equipment installed--in some cases, costing thousands of dollars. About 500 upgraded cabs are already on the streets. Officials for the TLC declined to comment on the lawsuit. However, in the past, a TLC spokesman has stated emphatically that none of the GPS systems considered for installation would allow the TLC to record the movement of taxis. He added that the video screens have many benefits for taxi drivers. For example, they allow cash-strapped passengers to pay with credit cards. While some of the required upgrades are technically separate equipment that could be installed individually, the TLC has mandated that they all be installed together as a single package. Furthermore, the video screens would be unable to deliver geographically targeted advertising without the GPS data. In addition to electronic maps that show passengers the taxi's route, the video screens can deliver news, entertainment, weather, and sports scores, as well as local and national advertising. Several media companies have already wrangled contracts to supply content and advertising to the screens. Clear Channel Taxi Media has partnered with NBC to create NY10, a channel playing news, weather, entertainment programming, public service announcements and advertising. And New York's WABC has partnered with VeriFone to produce Taxi TV, featuring content from WABC's Eyewitness News, AccuWeather and ESPN, as well as restaurant, nightlife, retail and hotel listings and ratings from the Zagat Survey.
Looking to add another wrinkle in the video digital distribution world, NBC will allow users to download ad-supported episodes for up to one week after their initial run on the network. NBC.com is launching a new service to handle this--NBC Direct. NBC Direct will give users high-quality video, complementing the streaming of NBC ad-supported program episodes that have been available on NBC.com for some time. NBC Direct will have a preliminary launch in October to test its service--and will be available initially on Windows-based computers. NBC's shows will include "Heroes," "The Office," "Life," "Bionic Woman," "30 Rock," "Friday Night Lights," "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" and "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." The announcement comes on the heels of some major digital distribution business adjustments at NBC--specifically in regard to downloading of programming. NBC and Apple's iTunes Music Store ended their pay-per-download service of NBC shows, because of issues over retail pricing and packaging. NBC then started up a similar pay-per-download deal with Amazon's Unbox service because the big online retailer allowed for more flexibility of pricing and program packaging. Later on, NBC Direct will allow DRM--digital rights management--protected versions of its programs to be downloaded to Mac-based computers and portable devices. Future digital distribution will include downloading of programs through peer-to-peer (P2P) distribution networks. NBC might also develop other download-to-own, rental and subscription business models.
At last spring's Discovery Networks upfront, sales chief Joe Abruzzese spoke about the advantage an advertiser can gain from what he termed "strategic product integration." Then, he plugged the benefits of slotting a brand in a show and trying to drive home recognition with an adjacent ad or billboard. "Recall goes off the charts when viewers see an ad, accompanied by a product featured in that show," he said. The sales team at Turner apparently has been effective lately at persuading marketers about the worthiness of that one-two punch, with a run of recent examples. The latest came on the Sept. 4 episode of the occasionally funny but well-acted TBS comedy "The Bill Engvall Show." Fast-food chain Sonic offered up the combination as one of the show's characters entered a scene holding up a bag and drink from the self-proclaimed "America's Drive-in." Later came a "brought to you by" billboard with the voiceover delivering Sonic's recognizable tagline. (It was one of the top product placements of the week, according to measurement firm iTVX.) Were any recall scores high enough to cause a Sonic boom? Hard to say. However, this may be a textbook example of why marketers like the one-two punch so much. If a viewer misses them once, it's hard to miss them twice. So even with a flawed product placement, a billboard that follows makes a brand message hard to miss, if not digest. Why was Sonic's product placement flawed? It smacked of the old model where a brand could have been attached to a burger wrapper just because the inventory was available. That's far from the much-ballyhooed new era, where in deference to consumer savvy, product placement that's "organic" to a scene or has a clear raison d'etre is said to carry the day. In this case, the teenage Lauren (Jennifer Lawrence) could have entered with delights from any chain from A&W to White Castle. There was nothing in the storyline, plotline, scene, conflict, conceit, etc. that called for a bag and drink from Sonic. Was it well executed? So so. "Lauren" held the food and drink up for the cameras to capture as well as a spokes-model would. And she delivered a "Sonic" mention in the dialogue somewhat humorously. When asked where she's been, "Lauren" dismissively says: "Uh ... Sonic"--with "Beavis & Butt-Head" tone--wondering why that wouldn't be exceedingly obvious from the bag and drink she's holding with the Sonic logos. One way the "Engvall Show" and Sonic do work together that probably wasn't on the front burner--for either the marketing side or from the viewer perspective--is that it offers a link between a family-friendly, anti-edgy, inoffensive, riskless comedy that could have gotten a 30 share 50 years ago and a chain founded in 1959 that makes a nod to the drive-in institution of yesteryear. The show features something close to the quintessential All-American family in '59, while Sonic offers carhops, root beer floats and cheese/chili dogs known as "Coneys" (even though its roots and corporate headquarters are in Oklahoma). Actually, with its quirky barrage of TV ads (the company says it spent $85 million this year on cable), Sonic has more edge than "Engvall." And the marketer does try to offer up some retro-chic and straddle the line between the days of beans and franks and the South Beach Diet. To wit: It offers wraps, but one of them has Fritos, chili and cheese along with the lettuce and tomato. Nonetheless, viewers uninterested in sociology who may have cruised by "Lauren" modeling the Sonic bag likely took notice of the brand when the billboard appeared and voiceover offered up "brought to you by Sonic ... It's not just good, it's Sonic good." Striking a chord with a viewer once, if not twice, may indeed be enough to be Sonic good.
ProductShowQ-Ratio Capital One Last Comic Standing 4.1258 BMW The Closer 1.7931 Sonic The Bill Engvall Show 0.9828 Apple I-Phone Power of 10 0.4117 Southwest Airlines Design Star 0.3958 Click here to view these placements. Data and analysis provided by iTVX.