Advanced Advertising + Reach at Crown Media. A Q&A with Casey Gould and Tom Ziangas

Crown Media’s Casey Gould, SVP, Ad Sales and Advanced Advertising and Tom Ziangas, Senior Vice President Revenue and Strategic Research are a formidable team. Gould is responsible for securing advertising and integrated marketing partnerships and enhancing the networks’ position in the marketplace while Ziangas, with his extensive research background, supports these efforts with long- and short-term research strategies and data-driven insights that drive revenue.

Charlene Weisler: What is new in the Ad Sales space at Crown Media?

Casey Gould: Crown Media’s Advanced Advertising unit is breaking new ground and gaining momentum as it strikes new audience-targeted deals with several advertisers in multiple categories across our linear platforms.  In an effort to meet clients’ evolving needs, Crown Media offers new solutions that unlock even more value in our audience, an advantage brands have long sought. We are incredibly excited to work with new and existing partners in­ innovative ways that drive their business forward.  

Tom Ziangas: We are working to better understand the value we offer our advertisers and working with iSpot (a company that measures creative effectiveness, impressions, performance and second-by-second attention of TV ads) TV attention metrics, which provides our advertisers with quantitative data that show our audience engagement levels with their brands.

Weisler: What is the value proposition?

Gould: Well, let’s start with our amazing brand and the fact that we have clocked in as the #1 entertainment cable network across multiple key demos in Fourth Quarter for many years in a row. We have always known that our platforms offer our advertising partners unparalleled access to a powerful and valuable audience. Now, through our partnerships with data-driven linear platforms, like Xandr (a data-enabled technology platform powering a global marketplace for premium advertising) and OpenAP (a consortium of major media companies dedicated to advancing audience-based campaigns), it has become even more evident that our audience drives results for our partners, ultimately elevating our overall value proposition.  Tapping into advanced audience insights enables our partners to more thoughtfully home in on the exact targets they are looking to reach with their commercial messages.  And while that reach is critically important, it’s also vital to remember the environment. Crown Media offers a reliably safe and positive space for our partners to engage with our audience.

Ziangas: As Casey says, a main point of distinction for Crown Media is that we are the leader in holiday programming – the gold standard that all other networks attempt to replicate. Research shows that our networks are also highly successful beyond holiday, delivering large audiences to our advertisers all year long. This reach allows us to tap into the micro-targeted segments they want to reach.

Weisler: What are some recent successes or achievements?

Gould: We are particularly excited about early successes in this space with partners in the Automotive, Telcom, Insurance and Pharmaceutical categories.  The breadth of these categories is indicative of the spending power of our viewers, regardless of age and gender, and we believe there is even more potential to unlock within our audience.

Weisler: What is next on the horizon for Crown Media’s Advanced Advertising efforts?

Gould: Our primary focus is listening to our partners to understand their objectives. Knowing what they wish to accomplish allows us to develop solutions that meet and fulfill those goals.  We’re excited to have these conversations with our traditional partners, as well as with newer brands and agencies that are really leaning into this space.  As the industry continues to evolve, Crown Media will be there with ad products and measurement solutions that meet the needs of our partners and give them access to our unrivaled storytelling and the powerful audience it draws.

Ziangas: Harnessing the power of national addressable advertising, we are working with and participating in the Roku Addressable pilot (a streaming service that has introduced dynamic linear ad insertion), which offers our advertisers the opportunity to further target their brand and message to the appropriate audiences across Crown Media.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

 

 

 

The Art of Branding With Susanne McAvoy

Susanne McAvoy, EVP Marketing, Creative, and Communications, Crown Media Family Networks, has worked for some of the top media corporations including Turner, Comcast and MTV. 

She knew that she was interested in a media career when her mother, sister and grandmother became stuck in a Red Army camp while traveling to China when Marshall Law was declared. “I became fascinated,” she said, “when I saw a photo of my mom flashing the peace sign in the air. I wanted to go to Asia. During my senior year in college, I interned at CNN in Washington DC which became my foray to get into television. I eventually went to Asia working for CNN in Hong Kong after I graduated.” 

In this fascinating interview, McAvoy talks about her role in overseeing Crown Media Family Networks’  cross-departmental marketing, creative, and communications initiatives as well as the social media marketing strategies for Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. She explains the concept of brand essence and how branding over the air synergizes with digital. In addition, she offers her insights on mentoring, work / life balance and how she sees the media industry evolving over the next five years.

Charlene Weisler: Tell me about how you moved from television news gathering to become a leader in marketing and branding.  

Susanne McAvoy: I worked for CNN during the Clinton election in the booking department as a college school intern. It was an interesting learning experience and when I graduated from college I went to Asia for one year working for CNN Hong Kong. That was in the early 90s. By the time I moved back to the United States I was working for Turner in Atlanta and they began their cable roll-out. I became interested in the marketing area of sales at that time. From there I moved to MTV in New York where I was immersed in the brand side of affiliate marketing working with some of the top marketers in the industry at the time. I learned about brand fillers and the essence of where the brand should be and should not be. It gave me a great perspective. This was the heyday of MTV and VH1 and it taught me to be a brand marketer. Then I moved to Oxygen which was very much a start up in those days. We had to figure out who Oxygen was – and this was when there was a lot of buzz about digital. From there I moved to Comcast where I did brand work helping to create Comcast Spotlight. The interesting aspect to that branding effort was to carefully consider how a name change can impact legacy brand values.

Charlene Weisler: What is brand essence? Is it difficult to change?

Susanne McAvoy: Yes. I have found that over time, branding has become more important as is the need to stay relevant and current. Some brands have evolved successfully and others have not. USA network, for example, had a dated logo and wanted to see how they could progress. They were able to maintain the strength of the brand and made it relevant to today. Eight years ago Hallmark was very new on the scene and still trying to forge a distinct identity. The programming strategy was a work in progress and the content didn’t yet have the signature characteristics that the network is so well known for today. We have come a long way since then and the network has become an extremely established brand. We looked closely at essence of that brand and kept coming back to the idea of “the heart of storytelling” in a warm, celebratory, and familial way. So rebranding Hallmark Channel to “the heart of television” was a natural and organic fit. Brand essence is to say what the brand is and have it mean something to somebody. You need to be clear over clever. If you have to explain it then it will take longer for people to understand. 

Charlene Weisler: How did you turn the Hallmark brand around?

Susanne McAvoy: I hired Lee Hunt who was very involved in helping with the branding. It was an 18 month involving testing of various taglines. We found that some taglines were trying to be too clever. What we realized is that we are all about emotional storytelling – coming from the heart. So we developed a wide range of colors and palettes because emotions run the gamut. Also as part of the research effort we conducted a segmentation analysis for the Hallmark Channel to see what our viewers looked like and consumer focus groups for Hallmark Movie Channel. The consumer focus groups were a tough recruit. It was hard to find Hallmark Movie Channel-only viewers. 

With Hallmark Movie Channel we found that the brand did not represent the programming on the network – there were movies, but it wasn’t all movies. So we looked to see what performed on air and discovered mysteries did well. The challenge from a branding perspective was that our corporate headquarters felt that Hallmark and mysteries did not work well together. We eventually convinced them that while Hallmark Channel is warm emotional storytelling, Hallmark Movie Channel is hard hitting emotional storytelling.

Charlene Weisler: A rebranding is sometimes like trying to turn around a battleship. Is it that hard to do nowadays?

Susanne McAvoy: Yes and no. If the brand is well known it is easier. If the brand is not known, it is harder. It does not work like a light switch. How you position yourself to consumers matters. Take, for example, Under Armour which is highlighting female athletes to make it accessible to consumers everywhere - relevant, accessible and easy to understand. This is an example of successful rebranding of an established brand.

Charlene Weisler: Tell me about your mentoring efforts.

Susanne McAvoy: I am very active in WICT, joining the organization while at Turner. Since then I have been the President of the NY Chapter Board and then their National Board. They do a great job in their educational program. I feel that it is very important to mentor and bring young women into the industry. And I also learn from them – I learn their video habits. It is a win/win effort and the best of both worlds. 

Charlene Weisler: How do you attain work / life balance?

Susanne McAvoy:  I try to turn off email on the weekends and focus on family. At home it is all about the family and the kids. When I am at work, I work. I have two cellphones to keep things separate. And I am lucky to have a supportive boss who has four kids of his own and a very supportive husband. I am fortunate that all of the pieces fit together. 

Charlene Weisler: Can you give me some predictions as to how you think the media landscape will look five years from now?

Susanne McAvoy: The landscape will definitely be even more fragmented and more programmers will be hesitant to sell content to other platforms. People will continue to watch linear but the use of DVRs will become even more prevalent. Lastly, I hope that programming content will become less violent in the next three to five years.

Q&A Bill Abbott - Crown Media

Although Bill Abbott started his career as a buyer at an agency, he soon moved into Research where he honed his strong analytical skills and then on to Affiliates and Sales. But it was in Research, according to Bill, where he gained his strong grounding for his future media roles – what drives the bottom line and what determines success and failure.  His current position as the CEO of Crown Media gives him the ability to put all of his experience to good use in steering his corporation through a sea of media change and disruption.  In this fascinating interview, Bill talks about Independent networks, Hallmark programming, current research efforts in his company and some insights into how the media landscape will look in the next five years.

The five videos of the interview are as follows:

Subject                                                 Length (in minutes)

Background                                                 (6:33)

Independent networks                                 (4:32)

Programming                                              (7:20)

Research and Data                                      (5:18)

Predictions, Smart TV and DVRs               (6:15)

Charlene Weisler interviews Crown Media CEO Bill Abbott who discusses his background in this 6:33 minute video:

Crown Media CEO Bill Abbott talks to Charlene Weisler about Independent Networks, such as Hallmark, in this 4:32 minute video:

 

Charlene Weisler interviews Crown Media CEO Bill Abbott who discusses Hallmark programming in this 7:20 minute video:

Crown Media CEO Bill Abbott talks to Charlene Weisler about research and data in this 5:18 minute video:

In this final video, Charlene Weisler asks Bill Abbott to comment on DVRs, Smart TVs and the overall media landscape in this 6:15 minute video: