• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, December 29, 2006

Initiative Innovations and Entertainment

Success Secret: Don't Fear Failure

It's not just that media has become the new creative or that advertising is the new content. Entertainment companies are paving the way with risky marketing moves that generate successes and, yes, even failures.

If you subscribe to this philosophy, you're speaking the language of Initiative's nearly year-old Innovations and Entertainment division. It's led by Alan Cohen, executive vice president and managing director, whose ideas have quickly helped grow the division. In a relatively short time, the new unit of Initiative North America scored three major entertainment accounts--CBS, Showtime, and Lions Gate Entertainment--and helped retain non-entertainment accounts via its new business area.

While Cohen's background is heavy in entertainment marketing--having held senior marketing positions at ABC Entertainment, NBC Entertainment, and Fox Filmed Entertainment--Cohen says the job isn't just about entertainment marketing or its at times ugly stepchild, branded entertainment.

"Entertainment companies experiment, then other [non-entertainment] brands usually follow suit," Cohen says. "If you make a mistake in entertainment, it's okay--you move on to the next thing. If you have your business at Initiative, you have that advantage--learning from what we are doing."

Even before scoring those big entertainment accounts, Innovations was thinking about what it could do for Initiative's other accounts such as AOL and Victoria's Secret.

"They brought a 'Why not?' attitude," says Pattie Glod, senior vice president of marketing and media at Limited Brands. "They put some ideas on the table which, while we haven't as yet pulled them off, set the bar for creative thinking on a totally different level. Alan is like a free-form consultant in that regard."

To help AOL punch up its media, Initiative Innovations worked with Fox in placing stripped-down, five-second commercials at the end of commercial pods, just before a program's return. The goal was to reinforce the longer AOL spots and foil commercial-skipping on DVRs. The plan proved so successful that it moved to other News Corp.-owned TV channels.

For Showtime's second season launch of the series "Weeds," about a housewife who makes a living selling marijuana, Initiative came up with a promotion with Rolling Stone that placed scent strips in the magazine, like those that sell cologne. Of course, these strips had a different kind of aroma. The stunt garnered a lot of buzz.

"When you look at plans from other agencies, you might respond matter-of-factly that 'Yes, this plan make sense,'" says Len Fogge, executive vice president of creative, marketing, research, and digital media for Showtime Networks. "But with Initiative, the response to their plans comes with a lot more excitement. You go, 'Wow, that's a really smart idea.'"

For CBS' new show "The Class," Innovations struck a partnership with TiVo that allowed viewers to download the pilot into their "Now Playing" list before it aired on TV. TiVo users could also record all of CBS' fall shows.

"In this new media world, you have to maximize the pull, not just the push, of your advertising," Cohen says. "The TiVo idea was to give (people) enough of a taste to want to get it." The results speak for themselves. CBS got 100,000 people to digitally record the show.

"We see advertising as content because consumers don't differentiate nearly as much," says Cohen. "Entertainment has helped speed that transition. What are the two-minute episodes of 'The Office' on iTunes? Is it an ad? Is it content? What is the ABC catch-up show of 'Lost'? Is that ad or content? We think that it provides a lot of opportunity to get consumers to engage in new ways."