John Miller, head of the NBC Sports Agency and chief marketing officer of the NBCUniversal Television Group, is one of the deans of TV marketing. He first started at NBC as vice president, affiliate promotion services, West Coast, in 1982 after spending most of the first decade of his career working at TV stations, including NBC’s WMAQ Chicago and CBS’ WBBM Chicago. He worked in promotion for CBS and CBS News for two years before returning to NBC.

After that, it was a rise through the ranks for Miller, until he was named NBC’s president of advertising & promotion in June 1999, right when NBC was firmly number-one in primetime and “Friends” was at the height of its powers. At the same time, Miller founded the NBC Agency, which he founded with Vince Manze and ran from 1999-2010.

in 2011, Miller was named head of the new NBC Sports Agency, while remaining CMO of the NBCUniversal Television Group. He also oversees all cross-company promotional opportunities and marketing initiatives for NBCUniversal, as well as chairs the NBCUniversal Marketing Council, which includes the heads of every NBCUniversal business.

In that capacity, Miller - a PromaxBDA award-winner many times over - was the perfect candidate to oversee this year’s jury process, with one-day events in both Los Angeles and New York. Miller led a group of distinguished panelists in voting on this year’s North America awards.

Miller, who four times has been named Entertainment Marketer of the Year, took the time to chat with Brief about his experience judging this year’s awards, what’s changed since the last time he served on the Awards Committee in the mid-80s and early 90s, and why he once again agreed to take up the mantle.

Brief: After all of these years, what brought you back to the PromaxBDA jury?

Miller: I took over the marketing department of NBC in 1985. At the time, all three of the broadcast networks had grandfathered positions on the Promax board, so I sat on the board for at least five years or so.

For about three of those years, I was the chairman of the Awards committee. Back then, we would spend three days at San Diego State University looking at tapes and the board members took on a significantly larger role.

After about five years of doing that, I handed off the board position.

Recently, Scot Chastain, who is PromaxBDA’s incoming co-chairman, has been very active on the board. Scot gave me a call and said ‘I know you go back pretty far with the organization. Would you be willing to chair the awards?’

The organization has been good to me, I believe in it, and I realized that I would be honored to take on the awards.

This time around it was much easier, and it felt like it was my way of giving back to the organization. I went out to L.A. for a day, and judged in N.Y. for a day. To a larger degree now, a lot of it is pre-judged, leaving us with the finals so they were very easy to do. Everything is done on iPads and anonymously. It’s a sophisticated and high-tech way of adjudicating.

It also was a blue-ribbon panel of judges, including many people I knew or knew of. It was a panel of showrunners, high-end agency people, and marketing people. It was quite a good cross section of judges.

Brief: What changes did you see this time around compared to last?

The level of work in these PromaxBDA Awards — and I’m also a Clio judge, so I see a lot of work - is very high. The concept work created for TV shows was right up there with best commercials you would see at the Clios. The level of work, level of creativity, level of budgets that have gone into marketing have become so sophisticated and so high quality. Yes, this is a TV marketing competition but the quality can stand with virtually any of the competition in terms of advertising and marketing across all media platforms.

Brief: How much has technology changed the way media marketing assets and campaigns are produced?

Techniques come and go, but CGI graphics and computer technology allows you to do virtually anything that you imagine and most of it is done that way. There are elaborate shoots and you can turn cars into robots, and put people in environments in which they couldn’t really be. A lot of that you couldn’t do in the past. The thing that has remained constant is that a great idea, a great selling message often wins.

Brief: Did you ever feel like some campaigns had an advantage because they clearly had more money to spend?

As far as budgets go, the most expensive spot did not always win. It was more about the creativity. A very simple piece might get high scores for creativity and effectiveness. Dollars could have an effect but creativity and effectiveness would always make the difference. (Editor’s note: Entries are judged based on two criteria: their overall creativity and message effectiveness. Judges give scores from 1 to 30 for each criteria, and the overall average score determines the winners.)

With the ability to give scores from 1 to 30, we had plenty of room to make a determination on whether we thought a campaign was very creative or very effective. It’s a very civilized process.

Brief: How do you think your long experience with media marketing affected the way you look at campaigns?

During my days at NBC Entertainment or now at NBC Sports or as chair of the NBC Marketing Council, it was my job to evaluate spots. Was it creative enough to cut through and was it effective enough to get ratings? I made a career out of judging spots and trying to make them better and trying to make them more effective. Do that long enough you learn what works and what doesn’t and you also learn what can be surprising or not. As a human being, you are touched by certain things, certain things make you laugh, certain things make you feel.

PromaxBDA’s North America and Global Excellence Awards will be given out on Thursday, June 12, at a ceremony at Manhattan’s New York Hilton hosted by comedian Jeff Leach. More information is available at promaxbda.org.

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