With so much of the TV industry’s attention in late spring focused on New York and the annual broadcast upfronts presentations to advertisers, it can be easy to forget about that other key television event that takes place just before everyone finally gets to relax over the long Memorial Day weekend: L.A. Screenings Week.

As program buyers from around the world descended on Los Angeles to screen the primetime pilots for the upcoming season, Sony Pictures Television decided to welcome them this year with an L.A Screenings-specific campaign that played off one of their slogans from a few years back: “lighting up screens around the world.”

“There’s a lot to recommend about that phrase,” says SPT CMO Sheraton Kalouria. “It was prescient to say ‘screens’ in a world in which our content is platform agnostic.”

As a slogan, the old phrase was a bit long, though. Kalouria and his team wanted to retain some of the equity from the old slogan, while making it new and fresh.

A little tweaking here and there and the team landed on “light it up.”

“We liked the promise of that. Light it up means a lot of things,” Kalouria says. “You could light up ratings, light up advertising revenue, light up and delight audiences; there’s a lot of promise in three short words.”

With the new tag in place, SPT’s marketing team decided to have a bit of fun with the L.A. Screenings clients.

Buyers found signage and collateral that played on the “Light It Up” theme all over the Sony lot, from the coffee table to the bathrooms.

One of the first things attendees received was a universal power adapter—a vital piece of swag for global travelers who are shuttling around town all week—with a card that read “Charge It Up.”

The popcorn that buyers munched on during the Sony Pictures movie reel came in bags that said “Pop It Up.”

And after some complaints about the intensity of the air-conditioning during previous years, SPT passed out blankets wrapped with a band that said “Warm It Up.” [Ed: For the full flavor of the onsite campaign, check out the gallery of images from the lot, embedded up above].

“We have the good fortune as marketers to never forget we are in show business,” says Kalouria. “This is a sales meeting; this is about emphasizing the business. We were celebrating entertainment and we wanted to have fun with it.”

SPT had reason to be in a celebratory mood this year, with the studio riding high off the success of hits like “The Blacklist” and “The Goldbergs.”

And a trio of new SPT titles—“Battle Creek,” “Marry Me” and “Outlander” were among the earliest sales at this year’s L.A. Screenings.

In addition to the various plays on “Light It Up” around the lot, SPT recruited the EP’s from their new series to come speak to the international buyers and give them the inside message of the shows.

“I’m so grateful to those producers for giving us their time,” Kalouria says. “They know the shows the best and they know what the vision is.”

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