Promotional campaigns for TV networks and programming—cable and otherwise—have long been handled by in-house network promotion departments. In recent years, however, many networks have turned to outside ad shops to handle branding and promotion. Wieden+ Kennedy (W+K), New York, has a decade-long relationship with ESPN, while others are quickly navigating the cable landscape, helping numerous channels establish themselves in a crowded marketplace.
For example, Mad Injection, a satellite of Mad Dogs & Englishmen, New York, recently crafted a pair of spots for the Independent Film Channel—"Hollywood Woman" and "Hollywood Man," both directed by Baker Smith of harvest, Santa Monica—which promoted Volkswagen’s sponsorship of the series Escape from Hollywood.
New Identity
"The five hundred channel promise is reality," says Glenn Cole, partner/creative director at recently opened agency 72andSunny, Los Angeles, which does project work for USA Networks. "People are finding [that telling] the differences between some of those networks is getting increasingly difficult."
For instance, when viewers think of TBS, it’s as the place to turn to if you want to see an Atlanta Braves game or a movie. But as Duncan Marshall, executive creative director at Publicis in New York points out, the network—which begins airing edited reruns of Sex and the City on June 15—is home to several other popular comedies, including Friends, Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond. So it’s no surprise that the network is looking to reposition itself as the "the home of funny." "Their brief to us was [to] dramatize that as best you can," says Marshall, "and with as much humor as possible, while keeping the comedy relatable, and reflecting the humor you see in the shows. It’s all very work- and home-based humor; it’s not surreal comedy or anything like that."
Publicis, which started working with TBS in December, created five :60s for the TBS brand campaign—"Name," "Ink," "Wings," "Buttons" and "Strange Fruit"—directed by Jim Jenkins of bicoastal/ international Hungry Man. The absurdist ads show people phoning a TBS call-in center to find out if something they are witnessing is "funny." The TBS employees ask the callers a series of questions in order to rate how humorous a situation really is. The tag follows: "TBS. Very funny."
Marshall says the agency chose Jenkins to direct the spots because he’s proven himself adept at comedy, as well as with dialogue and performance. (Jenkins also has a track record with creating network promos, having previously directed fare for Turner Classic Movies, and more recently, The Discovery Channel. For the latter, he directed "Antlers," "Milk Truck" and "Ranchers," out of nicebigbrain, New York, which Jenkins maintains when he serves as a campaign’s creator.) "He’s also particularly good at working with actors and getting them to ad-lib," says Marshall. "Once we got the basic dialogue as scripted down, he was very good at just going off and coming up with ideas off the top of his head and letting [the actors] run away with the script. That’s where a lot of the humor came from in the spots."
72andSunny recently completed several new promotions for USA Network original programming. "When they called us, one of the things they were working on was a new look and feel for the network," says Cole. 72andSunny’s first ad for USA, "Dueling Disorders" (co-directed by Cole and fellow partner/creative director John Boiler, and produced via Hungry Man), promotes two of the network’s programs, Monk and The Dead Zone. The spot portrays a humorous encounter between Tony Shalhoub, who stars on Monk as a former police detective suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder, and Anthony Michael Hall, who portrays a psychic on The Dead Zone. The two encounter one another at a conference—Shalhoub’s character is horrified that Hall’s character must touch a person to see the future. Both walk off, noting how odd the other behaves.
The spot both promotes the shows and the image of the network. "It was apparent to [the executives at USA] and to us that we can change the skins all we want, but there has to be something fundamentally different as an offering," explains Cole. "That’s originally what they came to us for help with: What’s the rallying cry here that’s different from [other channels] and how do we bring that to life? The Monk/Dead Zone [spot] happened to be the first example of that, but it also ended up being a promo for [USA] as well."
Product Specific
Union Advertising, New York, has created ads for a number of cable channels on a project basis: Comedy Central, TNN (now Spike TV), FOX Sports Net, Metro TV and the Independent Film Channel (IFC). Recently, the agency has created print, at-home and guerilla advertising for AMC, and will eventually do spotwork for the channel. Union has also produced commercials for The National Geographic Channel.
Nelson Martinez, partner/creative director, says his agency worked closely with the channel’s in-house creatives to devise the network’s campaign. "We’ve been approaching the shows that they promote almost the way a packaged goods account would approach a specific product that they make," relates Martinez of the National Geographic work. "We’ve been using the programming to sell the product—which is the network. [We] use those programs to give an idea to the consumer what the network is all about, as opposed to [making] a straight-up promo."
One example of the approach is the subtly humorous "Treadmill," directed by Patrick Sherman of bicoastal Anonymous Content. The spot, which promotes the program Be the Creature, shows a woman on a treadmill watching the show while she works out. As the animals on the nature program start to run faster and faster, the woman picks up her pace as well. The ad then cuts to a montage of footage from the show. "The work uses a comedic moment that sets up what the specific show is," Martinez comments.
W+K has had the ESPN account for more than 10 years. The agency creates spots for ESPN programming such as SportsCenter and NFL Countdown, as well as Major League Baseball (MLB) and National Basketball Association (NBA) coverage including the recent "24 to Live," directed by Brian Beletic of bicoastal Smuggler. Last year, W+K launched ESPN’s first-ever overall branding campaign. They have also created ads for ESPN magazine. "We’re really their business partner," notes Kevin Proudfoot, associate creative director at W+K. "[We create] anything from big branding ads to affiliate ads [and] everything in between."
One of the shop’s recent spots is "Foul Me," directed by Lance Acord of Park Pictures, New York. The ad, part of the "Without Sports" effort, shows a dad and his young son shooting hoops in the driveway of their home. The depiction of the father as an oversized kid, and son as an attentive and adoring figure makes for a warm and funny commercial. The closing text tag asks the question, "Without sports, how would we close the gap?"
Proudfoot says "Without Sports" tries to capture "instances where sports and our lives intersect. It’s very important in each of [the ‘Without Sports’] spots to feel the honesty and the truth of that," he adds. "Watching Lance’s reel, there’s a real sincerity to everything he does. It doesn’t feel like a moment concocted for a television spot; it feels like a moment that’s rooted in something that you’ve seen or experienced in the real world, and he’s just put a camera on it."
Working with ESPN also provides opportunities to react quickly to sports news. "One thing we try to do is to be topical," Proudfoot remarks.
Creative Opportunity
TBWA/Chiat/Day, San Francisco, has been creating commercials for FOX Sports for three years. The shop has come up with award-winning work for the cable net’s coverall of MLB and the National Hockey League (NHL), and has also created a network branding campaign. Earlier this year, the agency broke a series of spots touting the net’s regional coverage. Those ads, "Stadium," "Parking Lot," and "Up Late," were directed by Lionel Goldstein of Czar.US, New York.
According to Chuck McBride, TBWA/Chiat/Day’s creative director for North America, networks are turning to agencies to create ads rather than doing them in-house as a result of success. "FOX, ESPN, HBO and ABC have done some really remarkable things by creating a distinct brand—and with that, more value and [a greater presence in the] marketplace," he says.
A recent humorous FOX Sports Net spot, "Burglars" directed by Smith of harvest, shows a pack of thieves breaking into a suburban house. In the course of ransacking the place, one of them sees a San Francisco Giants baseball figurine and points it out to his cohorts. Recognizing that they’ve broken into a fellow fan’s home, they return the booty and leave a note that reads, "Sorry about the window. Go Giants!"
McBride says that he had previously collaborated with Smith on a MLB playoffs campaign—"Beware of Things Made in October"—that received many accolades. "What ends up happening sometimes is that you don’t have exorbitant budgets and so you have to be smart in how you produce them," he points out. "When you get involved with a director, there’s a lot of problem solving. When you’re successful at that, you build an affinity towards one another to help each other do good work."
While networks benefit from successful branding efforts, agencies also reap rewards, namely a chance to do good work. "The playing field [in cable] is pretty poorly branded so far," says Cole. "Creatively, it seems like a big field of opportunity. We’ve talked to a few different networks and everybody’s trying to do something outside the box to get noticed. It seems like they’re willing to take some chances to stand out from the crowd."
Martinez says that working with cable networks presents the chance to blur the line between entertainment and traditional advertising. "Part of the advantage of doing something for a network is that you’re not necessarily so tied in to a super-tight media buy," he says. "If you do something for a network, they control the air space. It opens up all kinds of freedom [to do] longer format where you can go in and do a two- or three-minute spot."
