Perhaps the most emotionally involving story at Thursday’s all-around fascinating Conference 2013 session, “Horror Stories: Nightmare Campaigns and How They Were Turned Around,” came from Discovery’s Lara Richardson, SVP of marketing for Discovery Channel, who recounted the company’s nightmarish journey promoting the popular TLC reality series “John & Kate Plus 8.”

In 2009, the show’s titular couple was on the rocks, but refused to talk about it on the show or allow it to be touched upon in promos. Meanwhile, the tabloids were in a frenzy, and Discovery, unable to address the couple’s problems, found itself getting scooped by the press on its own show.

It all came to a head at a promo shoot in New York that would feature the show’s talent, during which paparazzi hid outside the studio in garbage cans and swarmed the bus when it arrived bearing John and Kate’s eight children. Richardson, then nearly eight months pregnant, was shoved during the melee. “It was really dangerous,” she remembered. “That was a nightmare day.”

Eventually, John and Kate decided they would go public with their marital problems and air them on the show, and Discovery had to race against the clock to promote the special hour-long episode before the tabloids did.

“We had 30 minutes to cut a promo,” said Richardson. She wound up recording the spot’s voiceover in a car and rushing it through the approval process to get it on-air. It made it on time and Discovery got its scoop… the only problem was, the clip had been so hastily produced, there was a typo in it: the word “family” was misspelled.

For that error, Richardson admitted she almost lost her job, though it all worked out in the end.

“That episode was the highest-rated reality episode ever on cable at that time,” she said.

For Part 2 of our coverage from the Conference 2013 session, “Horror Stories: Nightmare Campaigns and How They Were Turned Around,” click here.

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