Stamford, Conn. -- Group W Network Services Entertainment
is borrowing a page from the marketing manual of its CBS Cable country-network cousins.
Effective with the National Show next week, the company
will complement its cable trade-press campaign with exterior space on buses in Atlanta to
tell its technical-services success story with some pizzazz.
The company, which provides 10 cable networks (emerging
networks, as well as established ones) with engineering and technical services, will spend
"several-hundred thousand dollars through year's end" to raise its profile,
Barry Fox, its vice president and general manager, said here last week. ICR Libonati USA,
a New Canaan, Conn.-based ad agency, developed the campaign, the attention-grabbing
visuals of which include an engineer holding a baby and the world in his arms, with
headlines including, "We Grow Networks."
"We've never advertised to any great degree
before," Fox said, but that had to change because "no one really knows what we
do" beyond its current network customers. Among its clients are veterans A&E
Network, The History Channel, Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel, plus the newer
CBS Eye on People, Speedvision and Outdoor Life Network.
CBS Cable's Country Music Television and The Nashville
Network have used guerrilla-marketing tactics for the past two years to bolster
distribution at the big cable conventions.
Besides becoming more visible, Fox explained, his division
decided to go with a simple, catchy campaign strategy because "there's a lot
more competition. We're the market-leader, and we wish to stay there."
Competitors range fromCrawford CommunicationsInc.
in Atlanta to Tele-Communications Inc.'s National Digital Television Center, and
"even some of our clients," such as Discovery Communications Inc., with its
Miami uplink site, Fox said.
With the onset of digital cable, Fox said, "we've
totally digitized the core of our plant here."
