• by August 16, 2005

MEDIUM COOLER -- When it comes to launching new TV shows, the marketeers at Black Rock have always done a pretty formidable job. While they can't always guarantee the new programs will find an audience and remain on the network's schedule, they can pretty much ensure that they'll get enough buzz to at least get talked about, and most likely sampled. This fall, the CBS Marketing Group plans on using a media tactic that's sure to generate plenty of water cooler talk - for the media buy itself, if not the series it is promoting. Actually, the media buy is a water cooler. Or rather, a network or water coolers stationed in the pharmacy areas of hundreds of Rite Aid and Duane Reade retail outlets.

The adjacency isn't coincidental. The bottled water dispensers and cup holders - a new place-based media option being marketed by AcquaCell Media - are being used to encourage tune-in for CBS' new "Prescription-Strength Comedy" lineup, including "Out of Practice," a new series about a family of five doctors.

As integrated as that theme may seem, the water cooler media buy actually relates more directly to CBS' umbrella tagline for the fall: "Quench Your Thirst for Comedy."

CBS Marketing's chief irrigator George Schweitzer says the idea didn't come to him as an act of divine inspiration, or even as the result of a divining rod. It just made sense, in this case, to make the message the medium - not the other way around.

"At the heart of any promotional campaign is the drive to inspire water cooler buzz," he intoned, without the slightest hint of cottonmouth.

Not that we want to pour water on that explanation, but we can't help wondering if the idea of using AquaCell's so-called "message on the bottle" approach wasn't, in part, a reaction to ABC's decision last year to use messages in a bottle - literally - to promote hit series "Lost."

Schweitzer's not opening his spigot on that motivation, so we'll assume it's just water under the bridge - for now.

Meanwhile, we're just salivating over the possibilities for other brand marketers to tap into the new medium's liquid possibilities. Evian? Nah, that'd be redundant. Depends? Antithetical. We've got it! Kool-Aid. Now that'd be cool.