Big Media Firms Are Offering Advertisers One-Stop Shopping

When Homer Simpson celebrates his 10th anniversary on Fox next year, the party will spill over from broadcast television into News Corp.’s stable of radio, newspaper, online and marketing businesses.

Increasingly, media companies are leveraging their far-flung empires to attract advertising dollars in what is becoming an increasingly competitive environment. News Corp. is betting that the planned multimedia marketing assault will appeal to big advertisers that are struggling to make their ads stand out in an increasingly cluttered marketplace. Along with CBS Inc., News Corp. is pushing what insiders refer to as cross-platform advertising--in effect, one-stop media shopping anchored by such high-profile properties as “The Simpsons.”

The trend is likely to continue as traditional media companies merge or venture forth into new online businesses.

“The larger the parent company is, the more sense it makes,” said Lisa McCarthy, senior vice president of CBS Plus, a unit that helps sell ads across CBS properties. But advertisers also are counting upon big media companies to transform such events as the anniversary of “The Simpsons” or the Emmy Awards broadcast into anchors for wide-ranging marketing campaigns.

Advertisers “are looking to the big media companies to provide them marketing solutions across a broad set of businesses,” said Michael J. Wolf, head of Booz Allen & Hamilton’s media and entertainment practice. “And when you look at something like the CBS-Viacom combination, you know it’s a company that has a pretty wide set of tools to offer.”

Integration also is evident inside specific divisions of big media companies. The Myers Report, a New York-based media newsletter, reports that ABC Sports and ESPN are blending their ad operations to speed access to a sports empire that includes television, radio, the Internet and such properties as ESPN’s magazine and its planned chain of themed restaurants.

Bottom-line considerations are driving big media companies to force internal divisions that once viewed one another as competitors to join forces. Broadcasters naturally envision substantial incremental revenue. But Myers Report Editor Joe Mandese cautions that some of the systems being created will amount to “little more than trying to cobble together some of a media company’s lesser advertising opportunities along with their better opportunities.”

Advertisers also envision cross-platform strategies as one way to control marketing expenses and more closely target potential customers. Fidelity Investments recently signed on as sponsor of a new CBS News segment called “The American Dream,” which chronicles Americans who’ve made a difference. And that led to a bigger deal across CBS properties, unrelated to “The American Dream” broadcast.

“We get a significant discount by doing it this way,” said Steve Cone, president of Fidelity’s retail and corporate marketing. “From an impressions standpoint, we’re getting about two to three times the value of what we’re actually paying.”

Fidelity’s 16-month, multimillion-dollar deal with CBS illustrates how the deals can work. Fidelity will continue to run ads on such important networks as CNN and CNBC. But it will run ads at the beginning and end of the weekly “American Dream” segments reported by Dan Rather, and advertise heavily through CBS’ radio, billboard and online operations.

Advertisers who’ve used the cross-platform approach say it can cut both time and costs associated with broad-based marketing campaigns. Cone said that Fidelity broached the idea with another network that was unable or unwilling to forge a program spanning its divisions.

Nokia Mobile Phones credits News Corp. with crafting a wide-ranging Emmy broadcast advertising package in a matter of weeks. “They can bring you the entire, integrated package,” said Debra Kennedy, director of consumer marketing for Nokia Mobile Phones. “You typically would have had to deal with your [advertising] agencies to buy things piecemeal, and then have to do the integration yourself.”

Nokia was a prime advertiser during the 51st Annual Emmy Awards broadcast. During the days before the broadcast, Nokia ads also ran through such varied News Corp. properties as TV Guide, KTTV/Fox 11 in Los Angeles, newspaper inserts and at in-store displays. Nokia also managed to create consumer buzz on the night of the broadcast by distributing phones to award presenters and winners.

The broad-based campaigns “make sense when you look at it from the consumer’s perspective because consumers don’t just see TV,” Kennedy said. “They receive all kinds of different media messages. And, from our perspective, it helps us tie together disparate pieces of a campaign to make it much more powerful. It helps us to reach our objectives.”