‘Product sampling” conjures up images of women in lab coats at the end of a supermarket aisle, but TVN Entertainment has successfully translated the concept to the video-on-demand market.
TVN, a major VOD provider based in Burbank, held a month-long “Watch & Win” campaign that consisted of a contest in which digital cable subscribers watched a movie trailer to enter.
More than 2.6 million VOD-enabled subscribers received promos about the campaign via cable spots and direct mail. Of those, 8 percent entered the contest. After viewing a “Watch & Win” trailer, 17 percent of them went on to purchase that particular movie. Furthermore, 31 percent of the customers who had not purchased a VOD movie in the past three months or longer eventually purchased a “Watch & Win” title.
“Many digital customers aren’t aware of their VOD service and have never tried it,” said Amy Kan, vice-president of marketing of TVN. “The campaign tells customers where to find their on-demand service, removes many of the barriers to entry and allows exploration of the on-demand space at no risk. In addition, our results show that once a consumer tries VOD, they are more likely to make a purchase.”
The three films with trailers in the contest were “Inside Man” from NBC Universal, “Poseidon” from Warner Bros. and “Just My Luck” from Fox.
Like most product sampling exercises, this one is part direct sales, part consumer research. TVN plans to repeat the contest later this year, but based on experience, the company will try to get more support from cable operators and movie studios to increase VOD usage.
British Invasion
Los Angeles ranks as the biggest market in a British Broadcasting Corp. campaign to secure local market carriage for its World News channel. That’s because internal research by the British news service showed L.A. as the U.S. city with the biggest pent-up demand for unbiased international news.
The channel’s demographic target is people in their 30s, evenly split male/female, college-educated, with some travel abroad. “It’s for people who are curious about the world, and in a market like Los Angeles, there are a lot of them around,” said Andrew Steele, Americas Bureau Chief for the BBC.
The BBC wants people to sign an online petition for their cable company to carry the chain’s news programming. The campaign consists of outdoor images of 12 countries rarely covered by U.S. newscasts. The tagline reads: “See the world you’ve been missing, for unbiased global news visit demandbbc.com.”
In Los Angeles, the campaign also features a wall-sized art installation at the corner of Ninth and Santee streets. The visual depicts a riot in Russia, one of the 12 under-reported nations.
The BBC hopes to use the campaign’s tally to prove the viability of the venture and pressure cable and satellite operators, particularly Time Warner Cable in Los Angeles, to carry the channel.
Advertisers can buy time on BBC World News on a global or regional basis. However, the typical commercial hole for a one-hour BBC show runs only six to eight minutes, compared with about 15 minutes in the U.S. Consistent global advertisers on the channel come from the auto, tourism, financial services and luxury goods sectors.
The channel utilizes a format of one-hour shows timed so that its big talent and stories hit at key hours for the big markets. It recently hired Rome Hartman, former CBS Evening News executive producer, to create a show for 7 p.m. in the Eastern Time Zone. On weekends, BBC World presents longer documentary-style news lasting an hour or more with a commercial hole of 14 minutes per hour.
News & Notes
Chandler Chicco Agency, the world’s largest privately held health care public relations firm, was acquired by inVentiv Health Inc. of New Jersey for $65 million in cash and stock. The agency’s L.A. office handles work for clients Immtech, Allergan and Valeant Pharmaceuticals. Simultaneous with the acquisition, the agency moved its offices to Santa Monica from Venice Beach. Pollack PR Marketing Group in Century City is now the agency for Expungement Assistance Services, a company that provides confidential legal help to people eligible to have their criminal records cleared. PPMG will provide strategic consulting to the company and implement a research-based marketing program with print, broadcast and grassroots efforts.
Staff reporter Joel Russell can be reached at
[email protected]
, or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 237.
