When NBC Universal Domestic Television Distribution wanted to begin promoting Meredith Vieira’s new talk show, it needed a plan that would let viewers get a feeling for what they’d be seeing.

Bear Fisher, senior VP of marketing and brand strategy for NBCU’s syndication unit, got the network to let Vieira take over the skating rink at plaza at Rockefeller Center. Then it was party time.

“She’s wildly relatable. We specifically went out there to bring in real people, not actors,” Fisher recalls. “It was a promo shoot, so you know, in your head you’re thinking ‘I hope she’ll talk about this [specific topic] with people’ and you hope she can work your talking points in. But what you need to not mess up is when you have a person who is authentically nice and genuine, you want to show that. My job is to just not mess it up… Don’t tell people that’s who she is. Show it.

“That was the beauty of the party situation. We didn’t have a script. We just shot her interacting with people.”

“NBCUni was looking for a launch campaign that captures the fun and authentic quality that is ‘The Meredith Vieira Show.’ We created a setting that just let her be her,” says Stun Creative’s Mark Feldstein, who runs the agency with Brad Roth. Stun, which earlier this month was named PromaxBDA’s North America Agency of the Year, was brought in to help craft the marketing campaign.

That party will be the centerpiece of several on-air promos that Fisher says should start airing around the end of the month. They’ll be shown to affiliates at next week’s PromaxBDA Station Summit in Las Vegas.

Vieira, whose show will premiere Sept. 8 and is cleared in as much as 96% of the country, is so well known that NBCU can just skip over the introductory promo phase and move directly into the get-to-know-you phase. As a former co-host of the “Today” show, one of “The View”’s gang from 1994-2006 and host of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” from 2002-13, the quick-witted and slightly self-deprecatory Vieira is as much a part of daytime as anyone this side of “Judge Judy.”

Other parts of the package include promos with fellow NBCU talk host Steve Harvey; in many markets and on NBC’s owned stations, the two shows will be paired, so one promo for both shows is logical and strategic.

“Obviously we have to launch her show, but anytime when we can lift the whole daytime block, that’s a win for us too,” Fisher says.

Harvey and Ellen DeGeneres did similar promos a couple years ago, even though the DeGeneres show is syndicated by Warner Bros. Ambitiously, Bear hopes she’ll be able to get all three in one place long enough to shoot a promo that would do triple duty at some stations.

The one piece of the puzzle that ought to really catch the attention of promo managers and marketers is how Fisher intends to uses digital media to launch Vieira’s show.

Fisher says that might include re-positioning Vieira’s relatively new YouTube talk show, “Lives with Meredith Vieira,” to integrate it more into the daytime talk show brand. “We’re having conversations about that,” Fisher acknowledges.

Otherwise, she says, “We’re working with our agency to grow her digital and social presence over the next couple months. Our target audience is a little bit older, which means they spend a little bit more time on Facebook than, say, Twitter. So frankly, it’s knowing where to find them. It may not be that traditional banner ads might not be the right thing to do but is there content we can provide that can connect them to the show?

“I think there is a little bit misconception these women aren’t spending time on-line and it’s actually surprising how much time they’re spending. Much more than you think.”

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