Live From the Motivation Show: ABC Replaces Marketing with Content

Marketing a new TV show has morphed over the last few years from running on-air promos and placing ads in TV Guide—the two most important things to do at the time—to the larger challenge of connecting with an audience in an emotional way.

“It’s much more difficult, but a lot more fun,” Michael Benson, senior VP-marketing, advertising and promotion for ABC Entertainment said Tuesday during the Promotion Marketing Association’s Integrated Marketing Summit held at The Motivation Show in Chicago.

“Fun” is the operative word. And Benson said the name of the game is developing multi-platform, multi-partner campaigns that, if need be, span the world to generate excitement and intrigue about TV programming.

“I look at marketing as content,” he said. “What we need to do is help people experience shows without giving them away.”

He operates by what he terms, the “3-D Chess Game” to market such popular shows as Lost, Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy. In the first piece, the campaign has to be original, and Benson said he does not like sweepstakes. He doesn’t think they work for ABC and he drives his team to come up with original ideas.

“If I see one more watch-and-win game, I’ll pull my hair out,” Benson said.

The second piece in the “game” calls for organic marketing, or a campaign relative to what ABC is selling. The third piece challenges marketers to come up with the unexpected. For example, when ABC was set to launch the second season of Desperate Housewives, ABC placed ads on 2 million dry cleaning bags in search of “desperate housewives” who were upset by having to pick up their husband’s laundry. The words, “Everybody has a little dirty laundry” could be seen on bags at more than 700 dry cleaning stores in four markets—New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Chicago (PROMO Xtra, Sept. 1, 2005). “It was a small idea that got a lot of buzz,” Benson said.

To gain attention for Lost, (which originally aired on ABC in 2005-2006) the producers staged a “giant mystery” called The Lost Experience around the show. The summer 2006 campaign took fans on an expansive, international scavenger hunt through Web sites, TV spots, e-mails, phone numbers and other clues in search of pieces to a larger puzzle, that when solved, enlightened Lost fans to some of the show’s most secret mysteries.

The effort had several goals: to keep up interest in the show that is about to debut its third season Oct. 4 and to interest new viewers. The integrated campaign was a massive undertaking that included a Web site created for the fictitious Oceanic Air, the airline that tore apart mid-air and crashed on a Pacific Island, leaving the survivors stranded. The Web address was placed in the final episode of season one and a wily viewer quickly hacked (followed by a million others) to find out what it all meant. The site was filled with all kinds of information about the show’s characters, as well as things about the show that weren’t visible watching it on TV.

Print ads used a parallel story line and created a worldwide scavenger hunt tied to marketing partners including Sprite, Jeep, Monster.com and Verizon. ABC partnered with networks all over the world to bury content and clues. Video was shot related to the campaign and placed all over the Web for people to seek out the pieces out and pull them together like a giant puzzle. A novel Bad Twin, was delivered to Hyperion (a division of Disney, which owns ABC) just days before its author Gary Troup, boarded the ill-fated Oceanic flight 815, with clues in the book tying to The Lost Experience. (The manuscript for the book made a cameo during season two). After ABC placed ads about the book in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal the book rose to No. 1 on the Times best sellers list, Benson said.

ABC also created a candy bar and handed them out at numerous events across the country. Willy Wonka-style golden tickets were hidden in the candy bars with codes that drove consumers online, all tied to The Lost Experience. The campaign, which ended Tuesday, was also tied to the DVD release of season one.

“It’s got people wrapped up in this show like we’ve never seen,” Benson said.

In a related development, ABC has created full-length music videos around Lost and Grey’s Anatomy (The Fray—How to Save a Life). The music video for Lost, debuts this week.

“We’re connecting with people in ways I never thought we would,” Benson said.

For more coverage on games, contests & sweepstakes
For more coverage on interactive marketing