TORONTO – "We just don’t make you the priority we once did," said Rogers Cable vice-president, television David Purdy on Thursday afternoon during a panel discussion sponsored by CTAM Canada on marketing video in a getting-ever-more-crowded marketplace.
It was part confession, part explanation by the Rogers executive who was outlining what all of the programmers and cable operators among the 100 or so in the audience (pictured below) already knew: With cable telephony growing so fast, Internet still a large part of the growth story and (for Rogers) massive ongoing wireless customer build out, that the far more mature aspect of the distributors’ product bundles – video – has been getting short shrift.
Purdy added his company is primarily concerned with overall revenue generating units, no matter the “unit” and building its bundled customer list as quickly as possible. But with that as the priority, even Purdy admitted: "We’re leaving millions of dollars on the table," later adding euphemistically that selling programming was once the top priority of the BDU but "nowadays, you’re lucky if TV is in the top 12."
So, the challenge was put to the programmers inside the Velma Rogers Graham Theatre – find creative ways into the consciousness of cable customers, of cable company managers and of their customer service reps doing all that direct selling.
And hosting a pizza party in the call centre like in the old days just isn’t good enough any more.
Those CSRs are under pressure to keep their call time low, call volume up, and sell, sell, sell. And they are pushing so many other varied products (as we mentioned: phone, wireless, Internet) – all with their own tech specs and rate plans and idiosyncrasies.
Purdy, Pelletier and Mountain Cable president John Piercy asked the programmers for help – to be as creative as possible and try to tie content or specialty channel marketing to all those other products they now sell.
"We have to compete for shelf space," acknowledged Corus Entertainment’s vice-president, content distribution and strategy Andrew Eddy.
Piercy recalled Mountain’s successful launch of Italian specialty channel RAI International where the cable company and the TV service tied that launch to the lowering of Mountain Cable’s long distance rates when dialing Italy.
"We said it was cheaper to call Torino than to call Toronto," explained Piercy, who added they signed up 400 RAI customers "and all of them are our telephone customers."
Channel Zero’s vice-president and general manager Cal Millar recalled how he once had trouble getting a meeting with a cable marketing executive to talk about his company’s digi-nets Movieola and Silver Screen Classics because the cable folks were concentrating on getting ready for a local Santa Claus parade. That made Millar think grassroots himself and it entered a vehicle in many such parades, gaining exposure to tens of thousands of people for minimal cost. "And with the cable company right behind us (in the parade) people knew then where to go to get us," said Millar. 
Another option, urged the cablecos, is to offer pieces of a linear channel’s programming on demand – for free, such as The Movie Network with Flight of the Conchords, said Mark Waschulzik, director, affiliate marketing. Astral Television Networks. "That gives us a shot at pushing our services out there," he said. "it creates that buzz and awareness."
That’s an excellent idea, added Millar, especially if the cable companies would be willing to offer up some time on the U.S. cable channels’ ad avail time at no charge in order to ask consumers to surf over to the on demand platform to check out that free content. Right now, cable companies are allowed to charge for cost recovery on such avail time but that is beyond the budget of some digi-nets.
But what would really float cable’s marketing boat, is seeing the programmers work together on large marketing pushes that would raise them all together, rather than having each of the dozens of individual services all trying different things at different times.
It’s been done before – with MeTV, newtvchannels.com and 31 Days of Great TV – and if it could be done again, such a combined thrust would be embraced by cable, said Purdy and Pelletier.
“We need some collaboration and co-operation,” said Purdy, who, at the end of the meeting, asked for volunteers for a new CTAM Canada ad hoc committee to come up with ways to better market video services in our multi-product, multi-platform world.
So, stay tuned.
