Marketing Strategy for Television

I have been curious recently about the ins and outs of how networks go about creating a marketing strategy for their shows. For example, ABC has a multitude of shows from their TGIT lineup, to Blackish, Castle, Dancing with the Stars, Nashville, Modern Family, and the Bachelor series. And that’s just to name a few. So I decided to do some research.

It is extremely important to draw people into that first hour. If you can get them to watch for the first hour, they are more likely to stay in front of their TV for the following hours. On Wednesday, ABC’s lineup consists of Modern Family, Black-ish, and Nashville back to back, beginning at 8:00pm. On Thursday, ABC’s TGIT lineup begins with Greys Anatomy and goes to Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder. I looked back at ABC’s twitter feed and saw that Modern Family and Greys Anatomy were the two Wednesday/Thursday shows advertised last week. 

                                      

Analyze your audience. If your audience is mostly young people, you are more likely going to find TV show promos on mediums where young people frequent, such as Instagram and Twitter. In a world of Hulu and Netflix, it is important to get your audience to the TV screen. Networks get ratings from those who watch their shows live. Networks must find a way to generate that live audience when DVR, on-demand, and other streaming services often seem like a more time effective option. One thing that I have witnessed networks doing is making TV show watching more of an experience. They secure viewers in that first hour and encourage them to stay for the following hours through “viewing parties”. Some networks will even send “viewing party kits” for their night of TV. This exponentially increases their chance of maintaining the live audience for an entire night of television.

All in all, marketing for a TV show is no longer an easy game. It requires strategy, careful thought, and collaboration. Networks have to choose wisely which shows they heavily promote. It is much easier to maintain an already gained audience, than to secure a brand new audience. So, do you market new shows or preexisting ones? Is it possible to do both?

Sources: 

http://variety.com/2013/biz/news/marketers-devise-new-tactics-to-promo-fall-tv-season-1200609566/

http://adage.com/article/media/networks-pool-marketing-faithful-engaged/240731/

http://www.adweek.com/news/television/only-one-new-show-promote-cw-takes-unusual-approach-fall-marketing-167407

Hefty, Hefty, Hefty, Funny, Funny, Funny

This morning, I was catching up on some missed television on Hulu and came across these hilarious commercials that are part of the Hefty Ultimate Easy Grip plastic cups campaign. It was too hard to resist blogging about it.

There are three commercials called “Turnt”, “Worth It”, and “#Blessed”. They depict young moms doing daily mom things, such as folding laundry, unloading groceries, and reading books. The moms are recounting these hilarious stories with such colorful language about their night.

Watch these:

Turnt

Worth It

#Blessed 

#Blessed and Worth It have reached nearly half a million views, while Turnt has almost 1.5 million views. The campaigns are incredibly relatable. Some of the phrases used are “this party is tight”, “FOMO kicked in so I went”, “literally dying”, “blessed”, “throw shade”, “hangry”, “bye felicia”, “I’d swipe right for that”, “the struggle is real”, “I can’t even”, and “sorry not sorry”. Admit it. You have used at least three of these in the past week. There is no denying it. The ads bring light to today’s lingo and made me feel as if our generation has created our own dictionary of sorts. The most interesting part of this campaign is that Hefty perfectly reaches their target market, while placing the attention on another segment. The ads mimic and reflect the tween/teen generation and the way that social media has changed their language. It shows how comical and crazy the language actually is by having it repeated by moms.

Hefty also brilliantly included the hashtag #partyhardmoms in order to further their campaign. Consumers were able to engage with other moms about the ads, as well as sing their praises. Here are some tweets I found when looking at the hashtag. 

I believe that these new sayings and this new language that millennials have created are completely driven by social media. We don’t typically talk like this in real life, but we use these phrases in Instagrams, Snapchats, and Tweets. Example: I dropped my flashcards on the ground yesterday as I was running from the library to a test and I stopped to Snapchat, captioning it “the struggle is real”. I have seen tweets from people of a cute boy with a tweet saying “I’d swipe right for that”. Or an Instagram from someone who saw a cute puppy on campus, captioning it “I can’t even”. We have created our own social media language and we don’t even realize it sometimes. It opens up a world of questions and possibilities. Who created these phrases? How are the meanings of these phrases translated across generations? How often does this language we create through social media change? Hefty deserves a lot of credit for the humor, originality, and creativity they brought with this digital campaign.