KDKA

CBS O&O KDKA Pittsburgh is launching its Turkey Fund on Wednesday, Oct. 13, marking the 40-year anniversary of providing food for local families during the Thanksgiving holiday.

TV stations help their local communities countless ways, year after year. These days, the need for food, warm clothes, toys, and Thanksgiving turkeys is much greater because of the pandemic. And stations are responding to the need.

“So you thought digital changed the marketing rules? I’d like to introduce you to March 2020,” wrote Tina Veon, creative services director at KDKA, the CBS O&O in Pittsburgh. “Not only did our world change, so did how we effectively market our television stations. And, what’s even more fun, we got to reinvent our marketing plans … weekly.”

I got an email from Tina Veon, the creative director at KDKA, the CBS-owned affiliate in Pittsburgh, saying that the station did a PSA with some former Steelers/Pens/Pirates players to honor the real life heroes in her town and did I want more info about it. I told her yes, that if she gave me some background, I’d share her story but I would also tell her my Mean Joe Green story.

That’s the concept behind a new morning news branding campaign. It was the idea of Tina Veon, KDKA’s creative services director, who brought it to Stephen Arnold Music because “those guys are the best in the business.”

Easy to recognize with their call letters emblazoned on the sides and their dish on top, perhaps no other hardware involved in the news gathering process says TV news like the news van. So it makes sense to use TV station news vans as part of the marketing. Here are some examples.