New WIVB Buffalo Website Highlights Its Commercial Production Prowess

TV stations not only provide a platform for local businesses to advertise their goods and service, but in many cases, the stations will also design a marketing plan that includes writing and producing the clients’ TV commercials.

Sometimes, that production is free depending on the amount of air-time the business is buying.

If your station ends up doing the commercial production, it begins a partnership that often leads to securing the lion’s share of the media buy, and a relationship that can last for years.

WIVB, Nexstar’s CBS affiliate in Buffalo, N.Y., recently premiered a marketing website that showcases its commercial production.

Makes you wonder what if there was a Nexstar internal website that shared local commercial examples from all of its stations? A creative and successful local spot produced by a station in Rochester could be a creative and successful local TV commercial produced by its station in Buffalo.

Jim Diavastes, a senior commercial producer with 36 years of experience at WIVB, says the sales department is “really excited about it because it is kind of a one stop. Our sales people can go out and say here’s what we can do.”

The website includes examples in a variety of categories including retail, restaurants, medical, car dealers and home improvement, to name just a few.

Diavastes says once the sales account executive and the client close the deal, he likes to meet the client face-to-face, to get the client to “take a hard look at themselves. What makes you different or better than the other guys?”

He helps the client put together a brand marketing plan “to follow through with print advertising, with radio and anything else so there is consistency across the board.”

Diavastes says his reward is hearing from clients how successful their advertising has been, and he says when he hears that “their business grew, you just feel good about it.”

Here are a few examples of what clients say about about WIVB’s commercial production:

For a medical campaign, the client wrote that “in less than two weeks, higher than normal response to the new commercial.”

An accounting firm had this to say: “I am pleased with our firm’s first-ever commercial. Jim has definitely set the bar extremely high!”

A car dealer says “we have seen steady traffic increased at the dealership, and a major part of that is Jim’s creative writing and superb production skills. He brought our television commercials to a whole new level.”

NOTE: Of course, there are locally produced TV ads that make you cringe. Some are horrendously funny. Here are just a few I found that make you ask, what were they thinking?

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