TORONTO – With a company-wide push to emerge from its distant second-place spot in the TV ratings, Canadians will see Global Television get creative when marketing its fall programming this month and through the fall.
“We’re trying to kick things up a notch,” Walter Levitt, senior vice-president, marketing for CanWest MediaWorks, told www.cartt.ca on Monday. “We’re looking for new and inventive ways to make sure we’re in the minds and hearts of people.”
Viewers will have already seen the push behind new Fox program Prison Break, which Global is simulcasting – and which launches August 29th. It’s followed in the schedule by ReGenesis, the inventive Canadian drama first aired last fall on The Movie Network and Movie Central.
Yesterday in Ontario and British Columbia, began the all-out blitz of outdoor, radio and transit ads pushing the star programs of the fall schedule on Global and CH.
The campaign features a labour-intensive media execution that is said to be a first for Canada. As part of its “domination campaign” in three Toronto subway stations, Global’s underground ad creative will be changed daily, so that all posters within a station are exclusively promoting that night’s line-up of programs on Global. Similar daily creative changes are planned for other outdoor media executions.
"We know that many consumers make their TV viewing decisions on their way to and from work each day, so with the help of our media partners we are changing our creative each night – to keep it timely and immediate," said Levitt.
Besides the fresh programming the network has for fall, “we need the advertising to be as entertaining as the shows are,” added Levitt.
For example, a number of subway cars will be saturated with creative from Global’s Sunday night 
animation run of The Simpsons, Family Guy and American Dad. The creative will be famous – or more likely, infamous – quotes from the stars of the shows throughout the trains.
Levitt, who joined CanWest this summer from Alliance Atlantis, is used to pushing the envelope with Showcase Television which, thanks to its edgy programming, often pushed the marketing boundaries.
However, leading the marketing team for a national network is a little different, he said, but “that doesn’t mean we can’t do a few things differently.”
So, Global will deploy Pixmen – a group of so-called guerilla marketers who will hit the streets with sleek 15-inch monitors mounted over their heads – with audio – showing 30-second clips of Global’s programming. Look for them wherever crowds gather – at the subways during rush hour, or outside the CNE or PNE or Rogers Centre or GM Place.
“They tend to stop people in their tracks,” says Levitt.
The whole idea is to get people thinking that CanWest has the hottest programs this fall (and critics are already calling Prison Break an early hit). “We want to get people buzzing… and buzzing to their friends,” he adds.
Other program anchors for CanWest in the fall include returning shows such as Survivor, The Apprentice and House, while the other new shows that Levitt’s marketing team have hitched their wagon to include Bones, E-Ring and The Apprentice: Martha Stewart.
“That will show a different side of Martha that no one has seen before, the business side,” says Levitt.
New Canadian shows coming in the fall and early 2006 include home shows starring Lynda Reeves and Debbie Travis, as well as drama Falcon Beach, whose two-hour pilot this summer rated well.
With CTV holding 18 of the top 20 highest-rated shows in 2004-05, CanWest has a serious mountain to climb. But, Levitt is hopeful that Global and CH’s new programming – along with the company’s newfound marketing push – will turn that order of finish around. (CanWest no longer seems content to simply promote itself by running ads in their own newspapers and promos on their own TV channels.)
Citing the company’s “re-commitment to marketing in terms of resources,” says Levitt, he adds: “It’s exciting to come to a company so focused on winning… our commitment is to not be number two for very long.”
