Sales Meet Scholarships
Q&A: Janice Arouh, EVP, Network Distribution and Service, Hallmark Channel
K.C. Neel -- Multichannel News, 5/20/2008 4:46:00 AM
Hallmark Channel is actively involved in trying to help local ad-sales teams extend their business while simultaneously promoting the network. Hallmark has created several campaigns local account executives can use to sell spots to clients, including a sweepstakes connected with the network’s debut of March of the Penguins in 2006 and “A Whole Lotta Love” campaign wrapped around Valentine’s Day in February. Janice Arouh is Hallmark Channel’s EVP of network distribution and service, responsible for distribution, local ad sales and affiliate-marketing efforts. Earlier this year, Multichannel News named her to its 2008 class of W
onder Women.
Prior to joining Hallmark Channel, Arouh was SVP of affiliate marketing for Fox Cable Networks, with oversight responsibilities for distribution, acquisitions, interactive, retention, national accounts, marketing and local advertising-sales initiatives for 21 entertainment, nonfiction and sports networks. Arouh began her cable career at Showtime Networks in 1991.
Arouh spoke with Local Cable Ad Sales contributor K.C. Neel earlier this month about the company’s latest local ad-sales effort melding scholarships with a local back-to-school ad sales campaign, set to run later this summer. An edited transcript follows:
Q: What prompted the idea of merging scholarships with local ad sales?
A: Back to school is the No. 1 spending season for consumers. It generates more revenue than Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Easter and Valentine’s Day combined. Back-to-school spending this year is expected to exceed $18 billion. The average family spends $500, with the top two categories being clothing/accessories and electronics.
Q: How do local ad-sales reps take advantage of that?
A: The top shopping venues for those categories are office supply stores, online, department stores and drug stores. Local AEs can target those categories.
Q: What is Hallmark’s goal with this latest local ad-sales campaign?
A: We have evolved to where we are today by doing things right. We have listened to our affiliates and we know what their objectives and challenges are. We found out that they don’t unilaterally sign up for promotions. They are selective and use a finite criterion to determine which campaigns they participate in.
Q: What are those criteria?
A: They look at the brand and the overall value of the promotion. Does it have unique prizing? They want to know how many cross-channel spots they have to run and when they have to run them. On average, 70% of their local spots is allocated to local ad sales efforts. The other 30% is generally cross-channel and PSAs.
Q: What are some of the components of this campaign?
A: We are very flexible with our promotions and that is key. The local advertising-sales group will determine how to structure the promotion. We have steered away from the classic sweepstakes promotion and in the future, we will continue to provide our affiliates with flexible promotions that meet their revenue objectives. For instance, they can determine how and who is eligible for the scholarships. They can be for elementary, secondary, college or life-long learning opportunities. The scholarships can be client incentives or incentives for AEs who sell the most spots during the campaign. It’s up to each individual system. Each market will receive $8,000 in grant money and it can allocated any way they see fit.
Q: What draws local ad-sales departments to campaigns such as yours?
A: Two years ago, we really put the pedal to the metal to push our local ad-sales campaigns. Our first big campaign was created around the debut of March of the Penguins. Since then, we have refined and evolved our campaigns to meet local operators’ needs. We included aspirational prizing in 2007 and that has been very successful. We sent people to Paris during our Phantom of the Opera campaign, and from there, we moved to the “Whole Lotta Love” campaign in February, where we sent winners to Tuscany in Italy. Our buy-in and participation has been tremendous, partly because our campaigns tend to be longer, which gives them more flexibility to reach eligibility requirements and partly because we give them good lead times to roll out the campaigns in ways that are successful.
Q: What are the eligibility requirements?
A: We do have guidelines for eligibility. We want them to run our back-to-school spots at least 300 times between Aug. 3 and Sept. 13.We give operators specific criteria on what networks and which dayparts to run our cross-channel spots to target effective demographics and appeal. We want to see our cross-channel spots on A&E [Network], ABC Family, Disney, HGTV, Hallmark Movie Channel, History Channel, Lifetime, TBS, TNT, TV Land, TLC, USA [Network] and WE [TV]. Of course, we like to see the spots run in primetime, early fringe and daytime dayparts.
Hallmark Push Hits The Books
05/20/2008Hallmark Earns ‘A’ For Effort
10/05/2008Saturation Ahead
04/30/2006Cable's Upfront Take Reaches $8 Billion
07/07/2008A Win-Win
08/18/2008
