CTAM Showcases Diversity in Cable Content

Year-Long Social-Media Campaign Puts Video-on-Demand Fare in Focus

By R. THOMAS UMSTEAD -- Multichannel News, 1/30/2012 12:01:00 AM

The Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing’s Advanced Cable Solutions Consortium will shine a light on diverse content on cable video-on-demand lineups as part of a year-long, social media-based initiative.

The CTAM consortium, along with pay-per-view and VOD content purveyor In Demand, will tout cable’s diversity- themed Hollywood movies and cable-network shows targeted to African-American and Hispanic audiences via a new Facebook page and other social media platforms, according to executives from both organizations.

FACEBOOK FEATURES

The initiative will launch during the consortium’s third annual and largest Black History Month promotion launching this February, according to Doug Ohlandt, In Demand’s vice president of programming promotion.

“We’ve known that [CTAM’s] Black History Month and Hispanic Heritage Month [initiatives] have been very successful, and that success has pushed us to focus on diversity as a message that there is on-demand product available for diverse audiences,” Ohlandt said.

The new Diversity on Demand Facebook page will offer promotional materials about diversity-themed movies and cable shows available on-demand each month. The page will also include media bloggers, contests and giveaways to help draw more attention to the various VOD offerings, according to Ohlandt.

The organization’s Black History month and Hispanic Heritage Month efforts have helped increase on-demand views among minority audiences compared to non-promotional months, he said, although he would not disclose specific figures.

“Our MSO partners have seen a lift in performance,” Ohlandt said. “The goal is to get them focused on ondemand as a viewing opportunity that cable provides for them. This is a way to let people know that on demand has a whole lot of programming for all sorts of people.”

For Hispanic Heritage Month last September, Comcast added 20 Spanish-language independent films from Latin America and Spain to CTAM’s on-demand offerings, generating a 15% increase in overall on-demand buys for the period compared to the prior September, according to Roberto Perez, director of Hispanic marketing at the MSO.

“On-demand is one of the key differentiators among our competitors,” he said. “One thing we have to continue to focus on is offering quality programming that will resonate with our subscribers.”

While audiences have found CTAM’s diversity-themed on demand offerings during Black History Month and Hispanic Heritage Month through traditional marketing tactics, Ohlandt said the company is turning to social media platforms to reach multicultural viewers, who over-index in their use of sites like Facebook and Twitter.

“One of the biggest things that we’ve learned is that some of the traditional marketing tactics are outdated,” he said. “We’re taking on the social aspects this year … they’re really not going quite as much to places where they used to 10 to 15 years ago; they’re more engaged in social media and particularly on Facebook.”

FEBRUARY FOCUS

For Black History Month, the consortium will offer nearly 70 movies and cable series in February, a record for the initiative. Titles include new on-demand selections such as Smithsonian Channel’s MLK: The Assassination Tapes; Showtime’s House of Lies; We TV’s The Braxtons; and movies such as The Help, Shaft, Purple Rain and The Book of Eli, said CTAM.

Once Black History Month is over, Ohlandt said he’s not concerned about having enough diverse on-demand content to fill out the rest of the year.

“There’s a lot of content available for diverse audiences all the time, so it’s a matter of thematically looking at the rest of the calendar to determine where the focus will be,” he said.