If you lived in Columbus, Ohio, on Wed., March 1, you probably couldn’t escape it. Everywhere you turned, even up in the sky, you saw a message from WCMH, Nexstar’s NBC affiliate.

“We decided to go big,” says Joshua Combs, WCMH’s creative services director. “We can say that we have done better than every other station in town and we wanted everybody to know about it.”

Specifically, WCMH can say that it has delivered the most accurate weather forecasts in central Ohio for the past nine straight years.

That certification is courtesy of WeatheRate, an independent weather research company that monitors forecasts in markets across the country and verifies accuracy by comparing local TV station forecasts against what actually occurred and then scores the accuracy of the forecasts.

Stations that promote their WeatheRate seal of approval pay a fee for that right.

Given that the local weather forecast still comes back in research as the No. 1 reason viewers watch local TV news, having a station being named “most accurate” by an independent service could tip the scales in its favor in terms of newscast ratings in a tight competitive market.

Plus, having the most accurate weather forecasts transcends time periods and days of the week. It’s true in the morning news, evenings, latenight, weekdays and weekends.

“You are doing something right if you have been doing it for nine years in a row, and so that is fantastic,” Combs says.

So, on March 1, the station’s advertising plan was to roadblock the day.

“We did everything, basically every media available,” Combs says.

And when he says everything, he not only means traditional media, but one not so traditional that would get people talking.

 The station rented a plane that towed a 30-foot x 100-foot banner. The plane flew over downtown Columbus and circled outlying areas for eight hours, the maximum allowed by law.

The plane was supported by social posts saying “look up now.”

“It got some buzz,” Combs says. “People are calling and texting. It worked out well because it was nontraditional.”

In terms of traditional media, the station had a cable buy that included “a supplemental buy solely for the Weather Channel with a high frequency throughout the day so our weather team could own the day,” Combs says.

The station had radio creative and a social media campaign for the entire DMA, Combs says, not to mention outdoor as well.

“We had dozens of boards all across Columbus, all with the same message,” he says.

Combs says the whole experience was fun.

“You are making an event which was pretty cool, and we were able to give our weather team some much-deserved promotion on an important achievement,” he says.

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