Mag Rack is stepping up the marketing effort behind its niche video-on-demand service, with plans to run a new series of cross-channel spots this week featuring testimonials from subscribers.
The Rainbow Media Holdings Inc.-owned company, which kicked off its first marketing campaign in December with a new “TV for whatever turns you on” tagline, also created a new on-air look and graphic opens for its 19 programming categories.
New content includes on-demand clips that give an overview of each of its VOD magazines, ranging from instructional Guitar Xpress videos to cooking, cars and video games.
“It’s very important for us to have a television brand that really provides a connection across all of our different blocks,” Mag Rack general manager Dan Ronayne said. “In the end, people make their television decisions based on brands, whether it’s a television show or a network brand like AMC.”
Parent company Cablevision Systems Corp. is the largest distributor of Mag Rack, which is available to 3.5 million digital cable customers nationwide.
Insight Communications Co. is the only other MSO to distribute Mag Rack on all of its systems, but the service is also available on a handful of Charter Communications Inc., Comcast Corp. and Mediacom Communications Corp. systems.
Ronayne said the ad campaign would run through the end of the year, but that it would be limited to markets where Mag Rack is available.
“The premise is as cable operators promote on-demand aggressively, there’s sampling and tune-in that takes place on a regular basis, and new people coming into Mag Rack all of the time,” he added.
Mag Rack will attempt to draw cable operators to its booth at the National Show in San Francisco this week by raffling off a Harley Davidson motorcycle.
