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From the Trenches: ABC Television
The Magazine for Marketing Strategists
By
Jeremy Esposito
CHALLENGE:
 ABC
Television is a sprawling company with more than 200 affiliate
offices spread throughout the United States,
Bermuda, Guam, and the Virgin Islands.
But while size can mean national
clout, it can
also mean difficulty in coordinating
marketing efforts among different
branches.John Nuzzi, VP, affiliate
marketing and promotion for ABC Television, said this began to be a
problem when
ABC rolled out its black and yellow campaign about six years ago. “We
had a really definitive look that was very specific and people weren’t
able to follow it,” he said. “We found ourselves producing
materials for different stations at different times just so that we
could keep control over the creative
look of our materials.” So ABC turned to Brandopoly, a Chester,
NY-based provider of brand management software, to find a way to keep
the ABC brand consistent
while allowing affiliates to customize materials for their local markets.
SOLUTION:
Brandopoly stores ABC’s brand assets—including logos, approved
copy, and artwork—on secure servers that local sales and promotional
staffs were able to access through the Internet. Employees at each
affiliate could then use
a template-driven Web interface to produce brand compliant promotional
materials for customers in each local market. The Web interface allows
each affiliate to
grant unique privileges to different station employees. For example,
the art director can access graphics while the advertising director
can access sell sheets.
The interface also includes both brand assets and templates, so users
can drag items into predesigned templates and easily create promotional
materials. “Customers
can’t believe that it’s this easy,” Trapp said. “We
call it the five minute rule. We can train anyone on this system in
under five minutes
and anything you need to produce is another five minutes.” Nuzzi
said that ABC was only looking for a type of PDF generator when it
started considering
moving some of its brand assets online three years ago. But he said
he has been impressed by how much ABC has been able to do with its
new interface. “Over
the last year we’ve thrown everything
at them. Can it do this? Can it do that?,” Nuzzi said. “And
they would just come back in a couple weeks and add that to the system.
They’ve
really stepped up to the plate and met our needs.”
RESULTS:
Since ABC Television
has begun using the new interface it has been able to relieve the heavy
demand on its New York print shop, which was “completely overwhelmed” because
it used to process approximately 75% of the entire company’s promotional
materials, Nuzzi said. ABC now gets its promotions to market faster,
saves the cost of shipping materials across the country, and spends less
time processing
requests for promotional materials. “This is the next evolution,” Trapp
said. “It’s just so cost effective that the alternative just
doesn’t
make sense anymore.”
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Press:
:: It's Not Cable; It's HBO On Demand
:: From the Trenches: ABC Television
:: ABC Builds Its Brand Behind
The Camera
:: A Hi-Tech Image Update:
ABC Using Internet to Distribute
New Graphics to Affiliates
:: Brandopoly Brand Management
is Ready For Prime Time
:: Brandopoly Expands Into
New Office Space
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