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myhbomax.com
It’s Not Cable; It’s HBO On Demand
On Demand content has been almost as successful as HBO's originals.
A
website (dubbed Quick Response Creative—Brandopoly’s
ASP Solution) for downloading and customizing affiliate marketing
materials was launched, and the direct marketing group was charged
with coming up with customizable and flexible plans for each
distributor.
Eric Kessler isn’t concerned that The Sopranos® is
on ice until early 2006. The HBO president of sales and marketing
isn’t worried that Sex And The City® has left town
for good. He’s not anxious that Curb Your Enthusiasm® and
Six Feet Under® may not return until after next Labor Day.
That’s partly because Kessler is confident in HBO’s
upcoming lineup (which includes the June premiere of the Tom
Hanks-produced series Big Love and the $100 million miniseries
Rome in September).
It’s also because of the success of HBO On Demand®,
which is now in more than 5 million homes.
HOD accounts for about half of video-on-demand requests in HBO
homes, “significantly reduces churn” and is generating
its own watercooler buzz, Kessler says. For instance, HOD homes
sampled Curb Your Enthusiasm® in unprecedented numbers and
helped boost ratings for its linear third season.
To keep bringing folks back, lengthy previews of new series—the
first 18 minutes of Entourage, the first 12 minutes of Family
Bonds—were added to the On Demand lineup before the linear
premieres.
That savvier approach to leveraging its powerhouse brand, not
to mention some of the best programming on television, is extending
to HBO’s cable affiliates.
“We adopted a new approach in the past year,” says Bernadette
Aulestia, VP, subscriber marketing and brand development. “With
distributors on both sides focusing on their multiproduct strategy—HD,
DVRs, SVOD—their attention is on how to package all these
multiple products.”
Affiliates asked the brand to suit up in more battles. “The ‘one
size fits all’ model—the one big promotion or big
idea per quarter—is not what they need,” says Aulestia. “Instead,
they’d say, ‘What we really need is to focus on these
three elements.’”
A website (dubbed Quick Response Creative—Brandopoly’s
ASP Solution) for downloading and customizing affiliate marketing
materials was launched, and the direct marketing group was charged
with coming up with customizable and flexible plans for each
distributor.
“…one-offs
are basically our life. Everyone’s in different stages
of their rollouts [so] it’s about meeting their needs at
that moment with something unique to what they’re trying
to accomplish.”
“Affiliates can now see us as the sexy brand that humanizes
their products,” Aulestia says. “Whereas we used
to call these one-offs, one-offs are basically our life. Everyone’s
in different stages of their rollouts [so] it’s about meeting
their needs at that moment with something unique to what they’re
trying to accomplish.”
New campaigns in 2005 will help drive DVRs and telephony, “with
some markets even talking about ITV,” she adds. “We’re
looking at ways we can imbed our content into all these new product
lines.”
Here’s one suggestion sure to please subscribers pining
for Larry David and James Gandolfini: ring tones playing theme
songs from The Sopranos® and Curb Your Enthusiasm®. Now
that’s sexy affiliate marketing.
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