Holding It All Together

Char Beales knows a thing or two about branding. She has been intricately involved in marketing cable networks, MSOs and the industry in general since the 1980s, when she was responsible for orchestrating the National Cable & Telecommunications Association's ACE Awards honoring cable programming.

Since then, Beales, president of the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing, has been integral to the industry's efforts to sell itself and its products. Under her leadership, CTAM has spearheaded several programs to promote products and services created by the cable industry. The organization has managed to take a lot of very technical products, give them new and catchy names, and promote them in a way that has been very successful for the whole industry, according to Joe Rooney, Cox Communications chief marketing officer and chairman of CTAM this year.

“We don't want another DOCSIS,” Rooney said. “We love the product, but as marketers, we hated the name. The engineers have given us some great products like OCAP [OpenCable Applications Platform] and under Char's leadership, we have managed to give them names like tru2way, which are great opportunities to brand those products in ways consumers will connect with.”

Rooney also credits Beales with an almost uncanny ability to bring divergent forces together for a unified goal.

“CTAM has always been about collaboration, excellence and education,” Rooney said. “And Char has led that mantra from day one. She has simply helped a lot of people become better marketers and that just makes the industry stronger.”

Beales' background may help explain her unique ability to unite different groups and help marketers understand the power of marketing and branding. Prior to joining CTAM, she was vice president of program development for COMSAT's Video Enterprises, a division that provided satellite-delivered pay-per-view programming to U.S. hotels. Beales served as vice president of programming and marketing for the NCTA where she began her cable career in 1980, and as executive director of the National Academy of Cable Programming, which sponsored the CableACE Awards. She has also served as the senior research executive at television stations owned by NBC and CBS and a media buyer at J. Walter Thompson.

To be sure, the myriad conferences CTAM presents each year are designed to help marketers become better at what they do and that includes making their brands stronger. The conferences are also crafted in a way that supports and encourages cooperative efforts to promote the cable industry and its products. CTAM's tradition of bringing in executives from outside industries to talk to conference attendees about how they built, salvaged and expanded their brands has been crucial as the industry has grown from a one-trick video pony to a stable of high-powered products that include voice and high-speed data. The trick going forward, Beales said, is to deliver and promote product enhancements that consumers want.

“The bundle is important, but enhancements become more important and that's where branding becomes very powerful,” she said. “It's difficult when you have products that people don't understand. It takes a lot of time to explain just what products are.”

For her part, Beales said she has always encouraged joint marketing efforts between cable companies. Among the shared marketing and branding efforts spearheaded under Beales' leadership:

The On Demand Consortium consists of more than 400 individuals who represent the leading cable companies, programmers, suppliers and research corporations in the industry. The group's goal is to expand on the success of on demand, support the development of advanced cable advertising, support the rollout of tru2way and interactive TV to the consumer, and define cable's cross-platform opportunities.

The Business Services Council was created to help grow the cable industry's business services units by sharing best practices and supporting industry-wide events designed to reach business executives where they are most likely to make their IT purchasing decisions.

The Digital Transition Council is charged with orchestrating CTAM's communications and marketing initiatives around the February 2009 Digital Transition.

The Integrated Communications Committee, created three years ago, is made up of MSO executives and communications executives to develop and support the execution of a comprehensive, national strategic plan to tell the cable story.

CTAM published The tru2way Guide on how the platform is being used to easily deploy new interactive TV content and features; ensure that a programming network's interactive content will run on different cable systems, set-top boxes and consumer electronics devices; support a retail market for interactive cable-ready set-top boxes, HDTVs, digital video recorders, portable players and other new gadgets; and open new revenue streams for interactive advertising, subscriptions and transactions.

Education has always been key for Beales. “Char's mission has always been to foster education that creates top-notch marketing executives capable of telling the cable industry's story,” Rooney said. “She has done more to collectively drive the cable industry's brands than anyone.”

The creation of CTAM's Executive Management Program — referred within the industry as CTAM U — immerses senior executives in an intensive week-long summer learning program at the Harvard Business School. “It's a stimulating, demanding program that challenges minds and invigorates careers,” Beales said.

Perhaps one of Beales' greatest accomplishments has been her ability to bring marketers together to create and build on the cable industry's brands. Industry CEOs have long worked together on public policy issues “because the cable industry has always had common enemies,” Beales said.

The creation of CableLabs gave engineers and chief technology officers an outlet to work together on technology issues. CTAM, under Beales' encouragement and nudging, has given marketing executives a way to jointly brand, market and promote initiatives and products, Rooney said.

The industry's first joint branding effort came in 1995 with the “On Time Guarantee,” designed to let consumers know that cable companies took their service standards seriously. Since then, CTAM and Beales have spearheaded other industry efforts such as the Cable Mover hotline and Web site, which helps customers who are moving to sign up for new services.

“These branding initiatives have all been accomplished and are very successful because of her leadership,” Rooney said. “It may sound goofy, but Char is the glue that holds all the marketers together by stressing all our common needs and opportunities.”

Rooney recalled the first time he met Beales in 1992 when she first joined CTAM. Several regional chapters were considering defecting from the organization because of some management, support and values issues.

“She basically said, 'Not on my watch,'” Rooney said. “True to her word, she fixed every one of those problems right away. No chapter ended up defecting.

“Marketing has always been a personal thing. Char has managed to break through the individual concept and has gotten people to work together for a greater good,” Rooney said. “That says a lot about her strength as a leader.”