TORONTO – Pay TV free preview weekends were once as common as snowstorms in winter.
It was the tried-and-true method of enticing cable subscribers to shell out for more movies. With the dawn of digital, however, the free preview fell out of favour because as digital grew and two new direct-to-home satellite services launched, The Movie Network added tens of thousands of subscribers through the first half of this decade. It didn’t really need to offer a free preview to get subscribers.
However, as digital growth flattens, the free preview returns on Bell ExpressVu and Rogers Cable this weekend – and on EastLink and Star Choice the following weekend.
This time though, TMN and the carriers are doing more than just opening up the main TMN service for 54 hours. All four BDUs have set aside a separate channel for the preview which – while it will carry all the usual content (movies and HBO and Showtime content) found on the main channel – will look a bit like "an extended infomercial," Domenic Vivolo, senior vice-president, marketing and sales, Astral Television Networks, told Cartt.ca.
(Rogers has even set aside an analog channel for the weekend, to try and pull more non-digital subs. Only the tiniest of cable systems might still have TMN on analog)
There will be calls to action in the content with bugs and lower-thirds as well as a three-minute spot between movies promoting a TMN subscription. "We’re going to have a sell message throughout the entire free preview," adds Vivolo.
TMN has tailored each free preview feed for each BDU, since all are offering different deals and have different technical capabilities (the cable ones will tout TMN On Demand, too, which the DTH companies don’t offer).
The free-view is also aimed at elevating the visibility of TMN and digital video among customers. With all BDUs concentrating on selling their bundle of products (video, Internet, telephony, wireless) instead of pushing just video as hard as they did in the past, the TV services which used to be central to the sell message now play second or third fiddle to new local telephone services and how much money consumers can save each month by signing up for more than one service from Rogers, Bell, or EastLink.
"One of the things we’ve been finding is that the focus is not on video anymore," says Vivolo. "It’s mostly on telephony and Internet and the bigger bundle – and we do suffer from that because we used to be the main driver.
"We want to take back control of driving subscriptions and this time of year, the fall, is key," he adds. "We’ve got our best programming ever and the more we can show that and have people sample it, the more we can show that subscribing is a good value."
Astral has also sunk a significant amount of money into promotion of the free-view weekend beyond the usual cross-promotional slots, buying 30-second spots and 10-second tags this week on radio stations such as 680 News, Q107 and the Canadian Traffic Network.
Print elements include ads featuring a countdown to the free preview weekend in the Toronto Star, Toronto Sun, Metro (Toronto), 24 Hours (Toronto) and regional daily newspapers. Over 10,000 promotional postcards were distributed during the Toronto International Film Festival and will be handed out at Toronto’s Union Station tomorrow. Other print elements were also produced for various affiliate promotional vehicles including direct mail pieces, bill inserts, digital box messaging, auto-dialers and a wrap for Bell TV magazine’s October issue.
Online promotion includes web banners on targeted web sites that are directly linked to The Movie Network Free Preview Weekend mini-site (www.themovienetwork.ca).
The Movie Network’s affiliate sales and marketing team is also on a road show to create awareness and excitement among customer service representatives at the affiliate call centres through a special presentation promoting the free preview and The Movie Network premiere of the critically-acclaimed Showtime series Dexter.
The on-air components of the campaign which were produced in-house by executive creative director Heather Senst and associate creative director Matthew Waddell, include a tease promo to inform viewers about the event. The promo uses original footage and captures a journey through several deserted urban and residential landscapes that eventually reveals a lonely video store clerk and concludes with the tagline: "The Movie Network Free Preview Weekend – Where Will You Be?" The 30-second tease promo has been running on U.S. ad avails since October 1.
Once it wraps up, Vivolo says he and his team will analyze the results and take it to other BDUs and perhaps use it with French pay service Super Écran.
"We’re hoping the spots and message entice them to try it and then we’re hoping the phones light up," he said.
"We’re also hoping for a nice, cold weekend."
