When I started writing the Market Share column two-plus years and more than 1,000 articles ago, this is the kind of story I envisioned posting. A TV station marketing executive sends me a promo his station did and he tells me how it happened, the creative and strategic decisions he made along the way, the […]
When I started writing the Market Share column two-plus years and more than 1,000 articles ago, this is the kind of story I envisioned posting.
A TV station marketing executive sends me a promo his station did and he tells me how it happened, the creative and strategic decisions he made along the way, the background, and why it was done the way it was.
“I took an interesting approach to a weather POP,” wrote Andrew Felix, WEAU’s director of promotions and creative services. WEAU is the Gray-owned NBC affiliate in Eau Claire, Wis.
“Rather than bragging about our coverage, I turned it around and thanked our viewers.”
Regular readers of this column know how much I tout the merits of using viewer/user testimonials in your station’s marketing. It is even more important and relevant today.
Facebook has made local news a participatory exchange between the newsroom and the viewers and users. Many stations routinely post Facebook and other social media comments from viewers in the newscast, even critical ones.
Using the real comments that tout your station’s coverage and content in your marketing is easier than ever with social media.
Here’s what WEAU did to create a weather POP using testimonial comments from viewers. At one point, Andrew Felix mentions that the station ended up with more than 300 positive comments lauding their weather coverage. To me, that’s 300 credible and powerful reasons why viewers in Eau Claire ought to be watching WEAU.
While I am not a fan of POPs as most stations use them, I am a huge proponent of using examples of your news coverage to bolster claims made in your image and branding spots. Those 300 or so comments, with the right copy to set them us, could make a persuasive campaign airing over months.
One more thing. It’s important for you to look for the serendipitous opportunities that come along when marketing your news content. How Felix saw all this and responded to it quickly is exactly the kind of vision I’d be looking for in a local TV station marketing executive.
I’ll let Andrew Felix take it from here.
The Backstory
“The evening of Tuesday, July 5, a strong line of severe storms was approaching western Wisconsin. Like most TV stations, as thunderstorm warnings were issued, we ran corner maps/crawls and occasionally cut-in over programming with updates. In one rural area, a tornado had formed and was heading towards higher populated small towns. Conditions were also ripe for additional tornado formations. Throughout the evening our entire 24-county viewing area was under thunderstorm, tornado or flood warnings. Our meteorologists went on the air with wall-to-wall coverage for nearly two hours. Some land and tree damage occurred but thankfully, no significant injuries were reported from this storm.
The Logic
“I was sitting at home while the storm passed through my neighborhood. Like anyone who works in local news, I watched our coverage and monitored the competition. As a promotions manager, I am always looking for things we did first, better, more of, or different that can be the focus of a promo. Unfortunate for me but fortunately for the market, the ABC and CBS stations also covered this storm with similar wall-to-wall coverage.
“Regardless, our station was on the air and we had great coverage of a life-threatening event; so certainly a proof of brand promo could be made. I am sure this spot would run and viewers would be like “oh isn’t that nice … they do a good job”. The promo would not have any significant impact and would be just another run-of-the-mill POB to fill up the airwaves.
“Later that evening, I started reading the comments on our Facebook page. Like every other business, our page has trolls and people who never understood the ‘if you don’t have anything nice to say’ logic. I skipped the people who were pissed about America’s Got Talent being covered (BTW, people get really mad when you take AGT off TV) by weather. Then I found a variety of messages that were specifically posted to our page complementing our team on coverage.
“I thought to myself, this is great because I could use some of these in my promo. I copy/pasted them into a Word document and before I realized it I had about 50 positive promo-worthy comments. The next morning, more Facebook comments were posted and I requested all storm related email be forwarded to me. I started counting and I had 106 positive messages in my Word document. In reality, there were probably about 300 positive messages but I was only coping the ones that were specific enough for the promo.
“When crafting the script, I decided to center the promo around our viewers’ comments and simply use clips of our meteorologists in action to reinforce what our viewers were saying. I think to have effective promos it’s important to approach them from different angles and mix things up. My ultimate goal with any promo is to win over some viewers and create some buzz. So creating a spot that thanked our viewers just felt like the right approach.
“As I started editing and building graphics everything seemed to fall into place. I mixed up the music throughout to create different identities between the station and the viewer.
“I am proud of this promo because it’s more than just a spot that brags about our coverage. It shows the dedication of our meteorologists and pays tribute to the thoughtful remarks from our viewers.
The Reach
“I firmly believe that proof of performance/brand spots around specific events must be completed and on-air within one day. In this ‘trending now’ world we live in people have already moved on a few days later.
“I had this spot completed and in our 10 p.m. news the following night. The spot was scheduled to run very heavy for the next six days in all dayparts. Normally, I would do four days but it’s summer and I worked really hard on finding all of those comments.
“The spot was posted on Facebook and organically reached 22,472 users (Facebook was nice to us) and I paid $35 to boost it to A25-54 and reached an additional 31,006 users.
“And, of course, this led to even more comments on Facebook.”
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