CNN Banks on Law Orders
By JIM FORKAN -- Multichannel News, 1/29/2001
Cable News Network executives hope the law firm of Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison LLP-which just consummated a $3.5 million cross-platform buy for its various cable networks and Web sites-will be the first of many corporate-law advertisers.
The San Francisco-based firm bought time on four CNN-branded networks-the flagship CNN, CNN Headline News, CNNfn and CNN Airport Network-as well as banner ads on related Web sites. The buy broke two weeks ago.
The CNN-exclusive campaign is aimed at those networks' upscale audiences, said CNN sales and marketing president Larry Goodman.
"It's a nice first, for sure," he said, noting that the year-long branding campaign is the first-ever for a corporate law firm on a television or cable network.
Goodman hopes the buy will open a new category, in much the same way as pharmaceutical companies first broke ads on broadcast and cable networks a few years ago.
"We're already in the process of aggressively going after [this segment] as essentially a new category," he said. He conceded that the though the law-firm segment contains many successful firms, it cannot match the drug marketers in ad-dollar volume.
Other firms might be spurred to break their own ad campaigns because of an anticipated consolidation trend along the lines the banking business, Goodman suggested.
In the past, the only lawyers who've made network buys have been those involved in class-action suits. Those seeking accident cases are largely limited to local media buys.
Asked what other categories CNN may be targeting this year, Goodman replied, "There are not too many truly new ones."
