• by Joe Mandese , 11 hours ago

I replied that it wasn't out of the ordinary and that in many ways, it is one of the oldest playbooks for both video-programming distributors and major consumer marketers: a promotional tie-in.

I mean, there likely are other nuances to the Netflix AB InBev deal -- paid sponsorships, product placement, branded content, etc. -- but at the heart of it, it's about two giant consumer-facing brands teaming up in a way to make the sum of their consumer reach equal more than just one plus one.

If I recall correctly, Anheuser-Busch's Budweiser brand likely pioneered the concept by sponsoring professional boxing matches on pay TV service HBO back in the 1970s and early 1980s. But it wasn't until the major broadcast networks began striking promotional tie-in deals with major consumer marketers -- especially retailers -- that the concept really gained momentum.

I remember writing the headline "Tiffany Network Shops At Kmart" for either Adweek or Ad Age when then CBS marketing chief George Schweitzer cut the first deal of that kind, and then NBC marketing chief Alan Cohen soon followed suit with a series of similar tie-ins promoting the Peacock Network's fall prime-time lineup.

In retrospect, it's hard to say how much impact the promo deals had, but as an advertising trade reporter, covering the Schweitzer-Cohen rivalry was one of the highlights of my career, so I was saddened to learn late last week that Cohen had passed away at the age of 69 after battling a long illness.

For all the new-and-improved marketing ideas he came up with, in many ways Cohen was about simple ideas that connected with people, including his 1990s efforts to brand a television network -- not just its shows -- to the American viewing public, via a high-profile campaign created by TBWA\Chiat\Day chairman Lee Clow, which certainly captured the ad trade's attention, if not average TV viewers.

The clever, copy-intensive campaign featured simple black text on stark yellow background in print and out-of-home media ads to extend ABC's presence beyond its own on-air promo reach.

In some ways, the campaign was bigger than the American Broadcasting Company itself, and was an attempt to brand network TV as a medium at a time when the medium was in decline. Its tagline: "TV Is Good."

Cohen, of course, ultimately jumped to the media agency side, where he brought his mix of Big and simple ideas to the client brands of Interpublic's Initiative Media and Omnicom's OMD units.

Along the way he found, developed and mentored some of the best, most creative and certainly most innovative media agency talent Madison Avenue has ever seen, including the team he assembled to cofound his own shop, Giant Spoon.

In fact, Giant Spoon initially called itself a "media services agency," but it was so brimming with creative ideas for executing brand marketing that MediaPost almost immediately branded it a creative agency, bestowing our "Creative Agency of the Year" award for 2014 to the media shop -- the first of five such awards it has garnered to date.

Cohen ultimately left "the Spoon," but never attained the same level of industry traction via a series of senior agency roles, as well as his own boutique Hot Marketing Coffee Studio, and I suspect his declining health had something to do with that. But he continued to brim with new ideas and a passion for media and marketing that I'd like to think of as the "old normal."