As Comcast corporate marketing was preparing for the launch of its new “Comcastic” branding campaign, they were presented with a distribution challenge. What is the best way to distribute a large number of new and highly customizable broadcast assets while remaining compliant with SAG agreements and mitigating risk associated with rights management? The team needed a more efficient and automated alternative for digitally distributing spots to network affiliates and cross channel locations. Additionally, they wanted to prevent field marketers from reusing bits and pieces of the existing assets when creating their own locally produced spots.
Visible World Conductor addressed the immediate need of being able to electronically deliver all spots directly to the station, which also eliminated the risk of the field misusing pieces of the assets. The solution made it possible for spots to arrive next day, compared to the three to four day lead time previously required. It also enabled the field marketers to create as many as nine customized ver¬sions of each spot quickly and easily, com¬pared to four versions developed in the past. These advanced customization capabilities enabled them to localize the spots and make the messages relevant to the audience of the local markets. The field was now also able to select the most appropriate call-to-action, price point and even product place¬ment for their ad in seconds, all while retain¬ing the look and feel of the corporate cam¬paigns. “Visible World Conductor enabled us to ensure brand consistency and made the ad customization and delivery process cheaper, quicker and more controlled,” said Sean McKenzie, Senior Director of Corpo¬rate Marketing with Comcast.
The results speak for themselves. Adoption rates for corporate creative continue to in¬crease. “We are hearing from the field that they are actually waiting for us to upload spots into the Dashboard as opposed to paying for a manual fulfillment option,” said Sean. In fact, field adoption of corporate-produced spots has grown from approxi¬mately 30% in 2005 to a projected 95% in 2009. Corporate marketing is now able to ensure a consistent look and feel for cam¬paigns deployed in the field, while the local field marketing teams gain access to the higher quality creativity developed by first tier agencies at a reasonable price. As im¬portantly, Comcast has been able to achieve significant cost savings by using Conductor. “We have been able to reduce the costs for versioning and distribu¬tion by as much as 60%. With the help of Visible World we are able to streamline the versioning process, provide the field more flexibility in customizing their spots, and maintain brand equity all while saving costs. This effort has been a huge success for us,” said Sean McKenzie.
