Can Early Hype Benefit New TV Shows Come Fall?

Networks Are Using Multiple Forms of Media to Start Creating Potential Audience

by Brian Steinberg
Published: July 13, 2009

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Can you interest a TV viewer in a new fall show when he or she is wholly immersed in the activities of early summer -- or, more removed still, enjoying older programs in the late spring? TV networks are trying to determine whether promoting new shows earlier can bring them bigger audiences come September and October.

ABC ran promos for 'Flash Forward' even before the network had publicly admitted it was picking up the show for the fall.

Photo Credit: ABC

Walt Disney's ABC sparked thoughts of fall in late April by running seconds-long promos for its new mysterious drama "Flash Forward" even before the network had publicly admitted it was picking up the show for the fall. News Corp.'s Fox, meanwhile, aggressively promoted its highly anticipated sing-along drama "Glee" by running the show's pilot after one of the last episodes of "American Idol" for the 2008-2009 season. CBS has embraced an intriguing tactic to arm itself for fall: It's giving affiliates promotional materials to tout programming in the 10 p.m. hour in advance of NBC's "Jay Leno Show" talk-show launch.

Within the industry, the failure rate for new broadcast-TV programs is widely estimated to be 75% to 80%. So it's no surprise the networks have begun to stray from business-as-usual launch plans that call for nearly all of the promotion for a new show to start mere weeks before its autumn debut. Thanks to the rise of social-networking techniques involving YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, tipping off die-hard fans to early peeks at selected programs can lead -- or so network executives hope -- to more buzz and a viral priming of the pump that create larger audiences of interest come September.

"When you launch a show in the fall, it's like the box office: You've got to get everyone there for the premiere. And then you've got to get them back for week two, which only gives you six days to convince those who want to come back and to try to get new people," explained Joe Earley, exec VP-marketing and communications, Fox Broadcasting. "What we're doing now gives us four months to try to get people to sample and come on board."

Time to break tradition
The networks aren't abandoning their pre-season maneuvers. Late August and early September have been filled for years with clever promotional stunts, such as putting ads for specific CBS programs on eggs and deli packages -- even supermarket freezer doors. Fox once orchestrated a city-by-city tour for its now canceled "Terminator" series. "There is no substitute" for heavy marketing in the weeks before a program's launch, said Rick Haskins, exec VP-marketing for the CW.

And yet the networks are realizing that they needn't stay rooted to tradition. New dramas and comedies cost millions of dollars to produce and promote, and many of them are substantially more complex and harder to explain than those of the past. "Flash Forward" centers on a worldwide phenomenon that leaves people seeing months into their future, then trying to tie their present to their visions of days ahead. "Glee" boasts a radical new concept for prime-time TV: a story about a chorale group in a local high school whose members hail from different strata of teen society (try mixing "Cop Rock" with "Freaks and Geeks"), and includes songs in every episode.

As a result, networks are starting to give certain fall-season candidates priority, and then use many different forms of media to build exposure to potential audiences, said Michael Benson, exec VP-marketing, ABC Entertainment Group. "You've got to start earlier on" TV shows, he said. Not only will ABC try to get promos in front of audiences for notable spring and summer content, such as season finales, the NBA Finals or "Wipeout," but will also use emerging venues, such as search terms and viral web sites. "We've got to go beyond just putting a promo out to build awareness," said Mr. Benson.

Indeed, many networks followed the official announcements of their fall lineups by putting up clips on their own sites and on YouTube. NBC went out and purchased ads related to keywords for its new comedy "Community" as well as the "Jay Leno Show," said Adam Stotsky, president-marketing, NBC Entertainment. "We can be there with not only links to our website but also be driving messaging through paid placement," he said. Likewise, the CW had YouTube clips of its fall dramas up online right after its upfront presentation, said Mr. Haskins, and has created "fan" pages on Facebook (As of Tuesday, a page for the coming drama "Vampire Diaries" had 7100 "friends.")

Tried and true techniques
Some of these techniques are tried and true. ABC has long used its NBA Finals as a promotional venue, and running ads on TV for the fall right after an upfront presentation is a technique NBC has used in the past. Still, there's an emerging sense that networks can do more to goose interest over a longer period of time, thanks to the rise of the web as a media vehicle.

Because online media tends to attract enthusiastic niches of people with very specific interests, TV marketers end up "talking to an audience that is voracious in its appetite for information," said Mr. Stotsky. "What was historically germane to just fanboys is become how the mass mainstream is learning about new ideas, new shows, and building relationships with those shows and expectations for those shows -- well in advance of their actually coming to air."

Of course, none of this precludes the heavy hype and promotional artillery fire TV viewers come to expect as the leaves get ready to turn color. "Every year, there is more pressure to get attention," said George Schweitzer, president-CBS Marketing Group. "This is early-awareness stuff. This isn't the heavy lifting yet."

Are All Social Networks the Same? BW asks: What's a Friend Worth?

In an age when Obama has become President, it's embarrassing for the primary press to continue to lump new technology trends into one bucket.

Are all social networks the same? Are all Chinese slant-eyed geeks? Are all blacks the same? Are we asking the wrong questions?

As with race issues, a little knowledge leading to general ignorance shouldn't be tolerated.

What's a Friend Worth?

The cover of the June issue of BusinessWeek asks, "What's a Friend Worth?" Not to single out BW, but many primary news organizations have promoted the same thinking - flawed thinking.

The assumption that all social networks depend on the notion of expanding circles of friends makes them all the same. This notion IS in common among Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, NYTimes, and others are trying to copy the same notion. Thus, are all social networks the same?

No.

Only to superficial analysts who can't see beyond the color of faces.

Facebook for Friends

Facebook is about past friends. I've reconnected with hundreds of old friends via Facebook.

Facebook is not particularly effective for making new friends. The policy for dual agreement to connect - slows one's ability to gain connections on Facebook. With my open policy to connect, about 150 of my connections are new. And many of those who spam frequently, I wish I had not connected with them at all.

LinkedIn for Business Development

LinkedIn is about business connections - some old, some new.

LinkedIn is not effective for maintaining touch among friends. LinkedIn does do a good job to introduce people with common business interests.

Twitter for List Development

Twitter is not for friends, but for lists.

A minority may use Twitter to maintain touch among true friends. But, it's not particularly rich in features to support contact management.

In reality, Twitter is list management. Celebrities use it to manage their fan base. Millions compete to develop their mutual lists. It's an adult game, popular among marketers and entrepreneurs.

Everyone loves it for receiving, sharing, and distributing information.

Myspace is Neverland

Myspace was the leader. I'm not sure what community they serve. Not surprisingly, they are losing share rapidly to the new leaders.

What will happen to Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and NYTimes' efforts to build social networks? If they have poor execution and follow the mixed vision from the likes of Business Week, they will have the same future as Myspace. With a clear vision, there's room for more communities based on the common social network notion.

Copying Features

When social networks copy features from each other, are they moving to displace the other?

Not necessarily.

The stronger companies will copy only those features that reinforce their position in the marketplace. We don't need alarming headlines that suggest XYZ is after ABC by copying one feature of their services.

American capitalism requires competition. It also makes great headlines. But, don't believe everything you read.

What's a Friend Worth?

Back to the question of the worth of a friend. Is it a relevant question - given the different focus of the various sites?

Is a subscriber a friend? Is a friend a friend? Is a follower a friend? Is a connection a friend?

Apples and oranges.

Stupid question.

Combine Social Media with Traditional Tactics: 3 Campaign Examples from IBM

SUMMARY: As the number of social media channels continues to grow, it can be daunting to figure out which tools suit which purposes for marketing.

See how an IBM VP combines social media with traditional tactics for product development, event promotion, and demand generation. Includes lessons learned and highlights from three campaigns.

Sandy Carter, VP Service Oriented Architecture and WebSphere, IBM, has been incorporating social media into IBM’s marketing since 2006. She and her team started slowly with corporate blogs, and lately have pushed into hosting forums and using third-party social networks.

A key lesson learned is that is that using social media channels is not a strategy unto itself.

"All of our campaigns involve a combination of traditional marketing, plus social media," Carter says. "We actually don’t believe in a solid social media campaign. We always combine it."

We spoke with Carter to discuss three IBM marketing campaigns that featured prominent roles for social media and online communities. Read on to learn how social media fit into the context of these larger strategies, and how the team combined social media with traditional tactics.

Campaign #1. Harnessing group knowledge for product development

In 2007, Carter and her team were building an IBM platform for Web-based applications called WebSphere sMash. At the time, IBM’s website had a robust set of online forums where developers discussed technical topics. That community represented a large skill and knowledge base.

To make sMash as strong as possible, the team listened to developers’ needs through traditional methods, including focus groups and analyst reports. Then, Carter’s team supplemented that information by going to the Web to ask developers for their opinions.

Channels included:
o IBM-hosted forum
o IBM-hosted blog
o Twitter feed

The team explained their vision for the product, and asked developers:
o "Is this something you want?"
o "What sort of features do you need?"

Information came pouring in, with about 4,500 postings to the IBM forum alone, Carter says. The team gathered this information, mined it for insights, and incorporated some of the advice into subsequent beta releases.

- On-going updates

Traditionally, the team’s development process followed this basic schedule:
o Issue a beta release
o Accept feedback for about six weeks
o Make updates to the product
o Release the final version to the public

The process for sMash’s release was more on-going, Carter says.

"We actually did beta releases on the blog, websites and forums we had. And almost every night we would take some of that feedback, post a new build, and people would download it and provide us feedback. And we did this continuous loop on the information that came in."

The community helped design everything from the user interface to the product’s name.

- Successful launch

Since its 2008 launch, WebSphere sMash has been regularly growing in usage, Carter says.

"We’ve already had 81 subscribers on Amazon EC2, which is more than any other product placed there." Amazon EC2 is a service used by developers to access resizable computing capacity.

The number of people downloading the platform from IBM’s website has increased 20% over the last four months.

Campaign #2. Building a community, promoting an event, generating leads

The team ran a 100-city road show on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) during the first two weeks of October, 2008. The goals were to bring together the SOA community in-person, further the community’s knowledge, and help IBM generate leads for its tools and solutions.

Furthermore, Carter’s team wanted the SOA community to stay connected online before and after the event. The team used social media and interactive elements to not only promote the event, but to hold the community together afterward.

-> Step #1. Promotion

In addition to traditional marketing -- including direct mail, display advertising, and one-to-one invitations -- the team used the following social and interactive elements to promote the event:

- Bot

On arrival to IBM’s SOA website, visitors saw an animated, 3-D person walk around the page with an offer for the event in her hand. When clicked, the person brought visitors to the event registration page. The "bot," as Carter calls it, increased clickthrough rates to the registration page a whopping six-fold.

- Twitter

The team sent messages on the micro-blogging service that included a promotion code. When customers signed up for the event with the code, they were allotted 30-minutes to talk with one of IBM’s Chief Technical officers at the conference.

Within three days, 40 people registered to speak with the CTO in Amsterdam alone, Carter says.

- Blogs

The team also blogged about the conference on several of their developer-oriented blogs. These posts, combined with the efforts on Twitter, encouraged some developers to mention the event in their personal blogs, feeds, and social networking pages. Some customers created groups on Facebook, and at least one created a LinkedIn group, Carter says.

"With all these social media add-ons, we got an incremental 10% lift in our registrations for virtually no cost."

-> Step #2. Connect customers

The team worked with a third-party provider to build an online community website called SOAsocial. Having a third-party host the community was important to avoid the appearance of an IBM-dominated and -based community. The team wanted the community to grow on its own.

-> Step #3. Encourage engagement and user-generated content

The team encouraged customers to take pictures at the events and post them to the photo-sharing website Flickr. This helped spur the community into action, and also helped Carter’s team save money.

"We usually have a photographer take pictures of the events. We had 100 events, and it would have cost us about $100,000 to have a photographer at each and every one of those cities, taking pictures and recording that for us," Carter says.

-> Step #4. Follow-up widget

After the event, the attendees stayed connected through the SOAsocial network. Carter’s team wanted to stay connected with them too, since the attendees were potential customers for IBM’s SOA tools.

The team built a widget that supplied the often-requested event presentations. The widget could be placed on a blog or website, or downloaded onto a computer.

"The cool thing about that for us is that the widget is driven by RSS feeds. So now that they have that widget, when we have news, we push that information out to those customers," Carter says. "If there is a new product, we can push a demo out to them."

Best of all, about 67% of the conferences’ attendees downloaded the widget, Carter says.

- Additional sales promotion

The widget also linked to and encouraged users to visit IBM’s SOA website to check out products.

Campaign #3. Energizing the market with interactive game

To help stimulate, build and further educate the market about SOA technology, in 2006 Carter’s team created a free 3-D game called INNOV8.

The game featured all the elements you’d expect from a computer game: interactivity, a hero, a villain, and a plot. The game also included SOA lessons throughout the experience.

During 2007, over 1,000 universities downloaded and played INNOV8.

- New educational content

Although not a socially-oriented game, INNOV8 served as an accessible way for people to learn about SOA and eventually become contributing members of the community that IBM was building.

"INNOV8 helps customers learn SOA concepts in a much more consumable way," Carter says.

Through research done in 2008, the team found that students taught through the game had an 80% higher recall on SOA topics than other students. They also found that graduates who had used the game in school were taking it with them into the business world to teach their coworkers.

- More accessible

INNOV8’s second version was Web-based, meaning it could be played on any computer with an Internet connection. That platform made it easier for people to share the game.

- Social promotion

For the second version, the team also created leader boards that listed the players with the highest scores.

They promoted the game through a separate Twitter feed, and through IBM’s blogs and forums. Promoting in social forums made it easier for people to connect with like-minded friends and coworkers after learning about the game.