Two Gray Television stations in different markets were able to share a promo that works for both. “There is no need to reinvent the wheel,” says one station GM.
Robby Thomas was in a bit of a bind.
Thomas, the GM at WTVY, Gray’s CBS affiliate in Dothan, Ala., needed new image promotion ready for the 2022 Super Bowl in mid-February and was missing a key manager.
“I was without a director of marketing and creative services at the time, and on the verge of paternity leave, so I knew I needed a hand,” Thomas says.
But thanks in part to Gray’s internal sharing tools for ideas and best practices, help was nearby. “We can see great spots and campaigns from other markets and potentially [can] apply them to our own,” Thomas says.
A fellow Gray marketing and creative director at WAVE in Louisville, Ky., Kris Ellison-Baete, had already texted Thomas with an offer of help. Then Thomas saw a promo WAVE had done on Gray’s internal portal that fit the legacy angle and matched the tone and style that his station was seeking to hit.
“I just texted him and said there is no need to reinvent the wheel,” Thomas says.
Ellison-Baete says the network of marketers across the Gray stations is very collaborative and is a big resource for all the producers across the company and the country.
“It really is a great system we have set up,” he says.
So, when Thomas asked if Ellison-Baete could customize the WAVE spot for WTVY, “I was like absolutely,” he says. “That the easiest thing to do.”
So how do you take a minute long promo with video, music, sound bites and announcer track all edited together for one station in one market and change it for another?
By this time, WTVY had hired Caleb Bannin as its marketing director, and for two weeks, Bannin got all the video shots that would replace the ones from the WAVE promo and sent them to Ellison-Baete.
“I was able to open up my project and drop some stuff out,” he says.
But not all soundbites are the same, and it took some editing finesse to make the WTVY promo align correctly, Ellison-Baete says.
“Caleb did a fantastic job collaborating with Kris to create something unique for our market,” Thomas says.
“It is a really cool process and collaboration is amazing and integral and very important to our business,” Ellison-Baete says.
Thomas says Gray has several different internal portals, like electronic garages, which are depositories of marketing and creative, sales presentations and news training resources. “All kinds of stuff you can use to grow whether you are in the biggest market or the smallest market.”
“That is one of the ways our accounting executives get inspired to find solutions for their local clients,” Thomas says. “We have got just a vast array of resources to help them grab ideas that have worked elsewhere and modify them to work in their own market.”
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